


Parting Line

by Jessepinwheel



Category: The LEGO Movie (2014)
Genre: A perhaps more positive portrayal of Bad Cop than he canonically was, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Cop Dies, But mostly Good Cop, But possibly not the kind you're expecting, Emmet isn't a Master Builder, Extremely Oblique Mentions of Suicide, Forgiveness, Gen, Good Cop Lives, Good Cop-centric, Gratuitous use of italics, Grief/Mourning, POV Multiple, Post-Movie(s), Revenge, Unreliable Narrator, and only shows up in flashbacks, he's stone cold dead this entire story, mentions of torture, that's why he's not tagged
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-11-21 19:42:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 52,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11364300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jessepinwheel/pseuds/Jessepinwheel
Summary: Back in Business's Artifact Chamber, Bad Cop chooses loyalty to his parents over loyalty to Business and pays the price.After Taco Tuesday, Good Cop is alone and deals with the consequences.Or: Bad Cop dies instead of Good Cop, and Good Cop copes, as best as he can. Everyone else slowly learns that Good Cop isn't exactly who they thought he was.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In plastic molding, the parting line is the plane that separates two halves of an injection mold. It allows the mold to come apart after the cooling of the plastic to remove the fabricated parts.
> 
> So I've finally finished writing this story, which I've been working on since October last year, and it clocks in around the 50k mark, which is pretty long. It's been so close to finished for such a long time that I just needed to make the final push, and I'm glad that I finally have.
> 
> The idea for this story came from a conversation I had a long time ago about how Good Cop's coping mechanisms would be different from Bad Cop's, and also how Good Cop would be _way_ better at hiding the damage than Bad Cop would ever be, and somehow what was meant to be a brief character study turned into a full story featuring revenge, an incredibly rocky road to friendship and acceptance, lots of arguing characters, and some minor breakdowns.
> 
> This has been an exercise in characterization for me, because Good Cop gets about three minutes of screentime in the entire movie, so I've extrapolated fairly liberally. I've enjoyed writing him, and I hope you enjoy reading him and everyone else.

_"You want to help them, don't you? Finish the job."_

_He looks up at his parents, frozen to the ground where they stand. There's fear in their eyes and silent words in their mouths and maybe, just maybe, they know what's coming._

_Hesitantly, haltingly, he takes the sprayer from Business. It's heavy in his arms. Stomach turning, he raises his--_

_"--don't want to."_

what are you doing? you have to! he'll--

_\--falls with a clang. It echoes hollowly in the room._

_He looks at Business and he's scared, his voice shakes, but he_ can't, _it's not_ right. _"They're my parents. I can't do it."_

_Business looks at him with a critical eye. He's not pleased, and there's little in the world that is more volatile than a displeased Business. "You've gotten soft--_

_"--don't have to do this, sir. Please, no!"_

_Business's smile is a mouthful of broken glass, crooked and cutting. "You've already let the Special get away once. I'm making sure it won't happen again."_

_He lifts the Scepter and--_

Good Cop's eyes snap open.

There's a scream caught in his throat between the empty spaces of his ragged breaths. The sound settles in his bedroom that's too big, too dark, too _empty_ and he can't--can't get it under control.

He sits up slowly, pulling away his sweat-soaked sheets with shaking hands. His heart is pounding in his ears and he has to--

He takes a deep breath. Counts to ten. Lets it out.

"I'll be okay, buddy," he says with a small smile that doesn't _quite_ feel real. "Just a nightmare."

There's no response.

* * *

Bad Cop is dead.

There's no dancing around it, no way to fix it.

Bad Cop is dead. He's not coming back.

Good Cop knows it, is the last person to ever deny it when he feels Bad Cop's absence like a constant thundercloud looming overhead. For all his talents, he's never been one to lie to himself.

Bad Cop is _dead._

It doesn't mean he accepts it.

* * *

_The day after Taco Tuesday is beautiful and sunny._

_Benny floats on through the Bricksburg town park after a long morning of reconstruction work, humming to himself. The world's been saved, birds are singing, and he can build as many spaceships as he wants. It's a good day._

_He's thinking about where he should get lunch when he passes the fountain and sees Good Cop--without the helmet, but the jacket and glasses are pretty indicative--on a bench, reading a newspaper._

_Well, he doesn't know Good Cop or Bad Cop that well, what with being on the run from them for the last however many years, but Good Cop saved his friends' lives and helped them defeat Business, so that probably warrants a hello._

_He waves. "Hey, Good Cop!"_

_Good Cop blinks and looks up. He's got bandages on his face, but he doesn't look too beat up beyond that. He puts his newspaper down and smiles so brightly that it's a wonder that rays of happiness aren't physically shining out of him. "Oh, hello!" he says. "You're that Master Builder from yesterday, aren't you? The one who built that spaceship."_

_Benny grins. "Yep, that's me! Benjamin Chu, at your service, but most people call me Benny."_

_Good Cop nods. "Nice to meet you properly, Benny. I'd introduce myself, but you already know my name." He tilts his head to one side. "What brings you around?"_

_"Oh, you know," Benny says, flapping his hand. "Helping rebuild after yesterday. You know all the stuff that got Kragled? Even with the antidote Business had, it's still hard to get some bricks to come apart properly, so it's taking a while."_

_Something flickers in Good Cop's eyes at the mention of the Kragle, but he just says, "Ah, right. The antidote_ does _work, though?"_

_"Oh, yeah!" Benny says. "Yeah, it's working, it's just taking a while. Everything will be back to normal in no time."_

_Good Cop smiles again, more softly this time. "Good, that's--that's great! I'm glad to hear it."_

_There's a bit of an awkward pause until Benny coughs and says, "I, uh, didn't have time to thank you yesterday for helping us escape. If you hadn't, we'd probably all be dead, you know? So, y'know, thanks."_

_A slight blush creeps into Good Cop's cheeks. "Oh, well, you're the ones who saved the day. Helping you out, that was just the right thing to do."_

_Benny scratches the back of his head. At some point between Bad Cop capturing Emmet in Bricksburg and Good Cop showing up to attack Cloud Cuckooland, something must have happened between them. He's not really clear on what their_ arrangement _is, but he can only imagine that they're fighting, because_ Bad Cop _would never go against Business the way Good Cop did, sneaking them out of the tower right under Business's nose._

_But on the other hand, Bad Cop's the stronger of them, so if he wanted to take over and stop Good Cop, he could have. So Bad Cop probably wasn't all bad, either._

_"And, uh, thanks to Bad Cop, too," Benny adds, because it's only fair. "Because he, uh, probably wasn't on board with the whole thing, but you still, um." He makes a vague gesture with his hand. "You know."_

_Good Cop's eyes widen slightly in surprise. "Oh, thank you! I'll be sure to let him know." He glances down at his watch and grimaces apologetically as he gets to his feet. "Sorry to have to do this, but I've got to get somewhere in about twelve minutes. It was good talking to you, Benny. Maybe I'll see you around?"_

_Benny waves him on. "No problem! If you want to talk, I'll be in the reconstruction sites for probably the next week or so."_

_Good Cop flashes a bright grin at him. "I'll keep an eye out, then."_

_With that, Good Cop takes his newspaper and goes. Good Cop's sunny personality must be contagious, because Benny finds he's feeling pretty good right now._

_He starts whistling tunelessly and returns to his walk. It's a good day._

* * *

Post-Taco Tuesday is...weird.

Good Cop would never admit it, but the difference between having Bad Cop around and not is not that large, at least at first glance.

It's quiet without Bad Cop's sardonic voice in the back of his head, but it's not like Bad Cop hasn't gone silent before. Bad Cop just...didn't talk much, inside or outside of his head. Good Cop is used to that.

Being in charge of his body for such a long stretch of time? Yeah, it's a bit strange, but Good Cop was usually the one in control back when they were younger, so doing banal things like walk around and cook and lean against the balcony to smell the fresh air feels less novel and more like tugging on a comfortable old sweater.

And not being able to retreat into his head and tune the world out for a while when he's tired? Well, that one _is_ new, but now that the whole thing with Business is over and done, he can take naps whenever he wants and it feels about the same.

Really, it's easy--too easy--to pretend that Bad Cop is still there. Having one of his moods and refusing to come out, sure, but _there_.

But...

But.

There's _something,_ something unquantifiable that feels...less.

It's not the feeling more tired thing or the quiet or even the physical absence of Bad Cop's sunglasses tucked into the neck of his shirt.

(Somewhere between the Scepter and Taco Tuesday, those aviators had gone missing, and Good Cop couldn't find them afterwards, no matter how he tried.)

It's more subtle than that, like trying to sleep under a blanket that's not _quite_ heavy enough or a tooth that _might_ be a little loose. If he's occupied, if he goes through the motions, he doesn't even notice it, but when he's all alone with no distractions, it starts to _drag_ at him.

Now that he's not hunting Master Builders anymore, there aren't very many distractions.

There's probably a word for what he's feeling, when he talks to himself and suddenly remembers that Bad Cop can't hear him. He doesn't know it, he's never needed it before, when Bad Cop was still--

Good Cop takes a deep breath and stares at his ceiling, traces the cracks in the paint and the faint water stains from that flood something years ago.

All told, he feels pretty normal, just with something that's a bit--hollow. Maybe he's always been like that, and Bad Cop just made it less obvious.

He wonders what it would be like, if he'd gone under the Scepter instead of Bad Cop, simply stopped _being._

He wonders if Bad Cop would feel this way, too.

* * *

The first time he talks to his parents after Business's Artifact Chamber is almost a month after Taco Tuesday.

He didn't mean to put it off. It's just that between helping with reconstruction efforts and...

Okay, maybe he was putting it off a little.

In his defense, he did Kragle them. He doesn't think that his parents are angry at him--they never were, no matter what he got up to when he was younger--but that's still the sort of thing that needs some time to think through. And if they really wanted him to come over _right now_ , they would have stomped over to his apartment and dragged him back by the ear.

Or called. That works too.

So he hops on a bus down to the countryside and visits his parents' house. He calls beforehand, of course. Just because Bad Cop forgets his manners doesn't mean that Good Cop does, too.

Even so, when Ma answers the door, she almost looks surprised to see him.

"Hey," he says. "I brought biscuits?"

* * *

They talk about normal things over biscuits and coffee and it's halfway pleasant, for all that it's pointless small talk. More than anything else, Good Cop likes being home around the tacky paintings and Ma's miniature trees and the smell of Pa's croissants. Sitting there and hearing Ma and Pa talk feels _right_ the way a lot of things haven't since Taco Tuesday.

They eventually make their way to _that_ subject, with Pa very slowly and carefully bringing it up like Good Cop will burst into tears if he thinks about it too hard.

"I'm not sorry," Good Cop says frankly.

His parents don't look shocked to hear that, of course they don't. They know him. Ma just sets down her cup of coffee and raises her eyebrows.

"I'm sorry you had to see what happened to B," Good Cop amends. "And I'm sorry you couldn't look away when I Kragled you. That was cruel. But I'm not sorry I did it."

Ma sighs. "No, you wouldn't be. And we don't blame you, you had no choice, but..." She looks down, then back up to Good Cop. "So he's gone? Really gone?"

Good Cop nods once and purses his lips. "He, um. He loved you guys. I mean, of course he did, but he--he loved you guys more than he cared about Business and his plans to change the world. He loved you more than he was scared of what Business would do to him. And, well, you guys should know that." He takes a long, slow drink of coffee, then sets the mug back on the table with a clink. "He said 'sorry'. Before, you know, he left."

(you can't do this! business will--

 _I don't_ care. _I didn't sign up to murder people. Neither of us did._

they're already as good as dead, you idiot!

_Maybe you can say that, but I can't. Business will have to deal with it._

no, no, don't you dare

 _...sorry, G._ )

"He was happy, I think, that you and me wouldn't..." Good Cop shrugs. "Well, we all know how that worked out."

"He was always being too reckless for his own good," Pa says. "I think we all knew he'd end up getting into trouble."

"Too brave," Good Cop says. "Or maybe too scared. I don't think he'd ever be able to live with himself if he killed you."

"And you?" Pa asks.

"I wish it never happened," Good Cop says. "But Business already Kragled you. You don't know what he's done to Master Builders, but believe me, at that point, it was kinder to put you down. Better that I killed you out of mercy than Business did out of vengeance. At least I'd do it quickly."

Pa sits back in his chair, a distinctly exhausted look on his face. "Is that how you feel, son?"

"I know it's not what you want to hear," Good Cop says. "But I won't lie to you. You deserve better than that."

Ma opens her mouth to say something, then closes it, twisting her lips in consideration. An uncomfortable silence settles around them.

Good Cop passes his gaze from Ma to Pa, traces the set of their shoulders and the tiredness in their eyes and sees how they look so much _older_ than the last time he'd seen them. They're not angry so much as...coming to terms with everything. It's the way they looked, however many years ago, when they found out about Bad Cop.

Scared. Unsure.

His parents don't love blindly. They taught him that love can't excuse everything, that there's morality and justice and sometimes that matters more. Everyone has to make sacrifices sometimes, and this...

When Good Cop pulled the trigger, he was fully ready to kill the last two people who _mattered_ to him, because he couldn't leave them at Business's mercy, to taunt them over their dead sons and test out whatever artifacts he wanted until they _wished_ they were dead. Then, as now, their well-being is more important than having their love.

"What I did was wrong. It was disgusting and I hated it," Good Cop says, "but I'm not going to apologize because if I had to make the same choice again, I would." He swallows nervously. "And if...if you don't want to see me again because of what happened, that's okay. I understand."

Ma blinks slightly wet eyes and says, "Son, no, that's not--"

"We're not angry," Pa says. "We don't want you to...cut ties or anything, now. You did what you thought was right."

"We've already lost a son," Ma says softly. "Just...give us some time."

Good Cop lets out a breath he doesn't realize he's holding and he feels--not lighter, exactly, but steadier. Like the ground isn't going to upend itself under his feet anymore.

"Thank you," he says.

* * *

_Good Cop heads down to the bus stop and Ma and Pa Cop watch him go from their doorway until he's nothing more than a speck the next hill over._

_They have a lot to think about._

_"You were right," Pa tells Ma when they come back inside._

("He must have known there was a cure," Pa retorts. "He was Business's right-hand man, for crying out loud!"

"No," Ma says. "No, he didn't. If he did, he would have visited us already to explain. He would have cured us himself."

"You think our son was after _killing_ us?"

"I'm not saying anything, dear. But the only time they avoid us like this is when they're worried we'll be disappointed. He used the Kragle on us. If he thought it would be permanent, well...it's a good reason to worry.")

_"I wish I wasn't," Ma says with a sigh. "But that boy takes after me too much."_

_Pa makes a face. "Don't say that. You don't really think that you--"_

_"I don't know if I'd make the same choice," Ma says. "And I don't know if the choice he made was the right one."_

_She leans against the wall, looking at her set of miniature trees, and remembers the son she taught gardening and tree cultivation to, the sons that seemed to take up so much more space than fit in their little body._

_She remembers the days before she realized her son wasn't just moody or flighty but_ different. _She remembers seeing him_ transform _behind his eyes, how he'd shout and fight, how his gait would shift, and wondering how she could have ever missed something like that._

_She's not proud of it, but she remembers lying awake at night wondering if this...whatever it was would take her son away or thinking that maybe the harsh voice that burst from his throat wasn't really his._

_(She never called them Good or Bad, even back then, when she wasn't sure of_ who _her son really was. They were horrendous nicknames, and calling one Good or Bad ignores so much about them, and especially now, she can't afford to forget that he--they both have unsavory things in their souls._

 _They're both_ good _at heart, but she knows just as well as they do that it doesn't take a bad person to do bad things.)_

 _She loves them so much, of course she does, but she can't, now as then, ignore that she is_ scared.

_She's terrified._

_She watched her son pick up Business's steel monstrosity and saw his hands--soft hands that he'd skinned so many times falling out of trees and riding bikes and she'd had to kiss better--saw them slide across the controls without hesitation. There was determination and_ complete surety _in his expression, and he was calm--always calm._

_When he pulled the trigger, he was sure to look them straight in the eyes._

_She doesn't know what was going through his head. She never has, but she knows he did what he thought was right, what he thought was_ necessary. _She and Pa taught him that, and she can't help but wonder now if maybe they were wrong, maybe they've failed their only sons that they--he would have to make that sort of choice._

 _No matter how much she loves him, how much she thinks of him as her wonderful son, she can't forget that he can_ and has _tried to kill her without hesitation. She knows, deep in her heart, that he didn't_ want _to, that it hurt him just as much, but she can't deny the blood thundering in her ears when she saw him at the door or the tension in her bones just from sitting in the same room or her_ relief _to see him go._

_"...Dear?" Pa asks._

_Ma sighs and takes off her glasses. "I'm...I'm scared of him. I shouldn't be, he wouldn't hurt a fly, but I... What kind of mother is scared of her son?" She bites her lip and rubs her eyes. "Are we bad parents?"_

_"We did our best," Pa says._

_"But maybe that wasn't good enough. Maybe we should have taught him differently. Taught_ them _differently."_

_Pa sets a hand on Ma's shoulder. "You can say 'what if' until the cows come home, dear, but it won't change anything."_

_"What about you?" Ma snaps back. "How do you feel about this?"_

_Pa's answering silence is telling._

_"Give it some time, now," Pa eventually says. "We'll see what happens."_

_"It's not that easy," Ma retorts._

_Pa grimaces. "I know."_

* * *

There's a science to faking a smile.

It's not particularly complex, with most of it coming down to standing in front of a mirror and practicing--a lift of the lips in one way, a crinkle in the eyes in another. The key point to remember is that a good fake smile isn't one that necessarily looks "happy", but _normal._

Good Cop is awful at faking smiles. His fake smiles are meretricious in the extreme while his real smiles are subdued and private. Nobody with half a brain could ever be fooled into thinking they're the same and he knows better than to try.

The trick is, he doesn't have to.

Nobody he talks to these days has ever seen his real smile.

* * *

Good Cop finds happiness as a whole rather nebulous.

It's not a new thing. Bad Cop always felt things more strongly, let his emotions run through him and fuel his actions while Good Cop preferred to keep his emotions out of his decision-making process. They balanced each other out, that way.

Good Cop likes to think that he's happy most of the time, but sometimes he's not entirely sure what that means.

He's at peace, certainly. He's never seen the point in worrying about things he can't change, whereas Bad Cop would yell and fume about all sorts of problems they couldn't help or worry about things they couldn't predict. Stressing out never helped anyone--the times he'd had to take over for Bad Cop after he worried himself to exhaustion could attest to that--so he generally opted to not do so.

Content? Yes, he's content, has been for a long time. Ignoring the unfortunate and numerous problems that came along with working for Business, the work was challenging and fulfilling and his living situation was more stable than Octan's stock prices. Yes, he did many things that he's not proud of, but he got to help people who needed it, whether that was giving someone directions to the local mall or administering chest compressions until paramedics arrived. He didn't get a lot of time for hobbies, but it's not like he or Bad Cop had ever wanted that--doing his part was all he really needed.

But _happy?_

_(What do you mean, 'what's happiness like'? You're always happy._

no, you're different when you're happy. you like to do different things, you talk to people differently.

_You say I do that all the time. What's special about now?_

i just. how does it feel?

_What? I mean, it's...happy. I feel good, I want other people to feel good. It's like...when you spend a lot of time learning how to skip rocks on the lake and you finally get it all the way across, or when you come home and smell Pa's holiday mince pie. Everything's bigger and better and you want to share it with everyone you like. You know what I mean, right?_

oh. i. i suppose so.)

The closest he's ever felt to something like that low warmth in his chest or that lightness in his feet was back when he realized he wasn't going to be alone, that he'd always have someone to support him. That was...a long time ago, before he even really _knew_ Bad Cop. Their voices hadn't even resolved enough to distinguish who was who.

(Hey. _hey. Don't worry._ i'm here.)

The fact that he's never really felt that way again since Bad Cop is probably not a coincidence, but he's never had a problem with it. For all that he's not great at feeling things firsthand, he can empathize--he had to, with Bad Cop--and if keeping his emotions at arm's length means he can keep himself in control, it's better that way.

But Bad Cop's not here anymore, and Good Cop is alone and yet again unable to figure out whether he's really _happy_ these days.

Logically, he should be. He's right where he needs to be, helping the city rebuild and getting people back on their feet just like a proper friendly neighborhood police officer should. He's making people happy, he's met interesting people who enjoy his company and whom he enjoys talking to. And now that he's free of Business, he doesn't have to hurt people anymore, or ever again.

Surely, compared to all that, the fact that Bad Cop is gone, the fact that his parents need time to themselves, what is that? Bad Cop wouldn't want him to tear himself apart just because he was gone. His parents will let him know when they're ready to talk to him again. Everything will be okay.

And yet.

The best he can say is that he's not _unhappy._ He's more familiar with the negative emotions, having dealt with so many people in duress, not to mention Bad Cop's mood in general for the last several years under Business. He knows what it is to be frustrated or angry or straight-up _done_ and he's not any of that right now.

So for now, he keeps a smile on his face because he _is_ happy, or close enough, and he doesn't want people to assume otherwise.

Strangers are better off not worrying about him.

* * *

"Hey! Hey!"

Good Cop glances up from his clipboard to see the Master Builder construction worker--his name was...Emmet.

Right, Emmet Brickowski, the man with an astoundingly generic face and, according to his coworkers, no personality to speak of.

Which Good Cop finds weird, because from even his extremely limited observation, Emmet _clearly_ has a personality: incautious to the point of stupidity or insanity--he still isn't sure which.

(That being said, a lot of people have done stupid things since Business started pulling down the walls and easing off on the instructions after Taco Tuesday, so maybe that's just what people do when they don't have directions to follow. Say what you will about Business and his draconian policies, but at least under his term, Good Cop never had to deal with people taping thirty birds together to make a "super megabird" or flooding their apartment buildings with gelatin.)

"Hey!" Emmet says again. "You're, you're Good Cop, right?"

Good Cop smiles. "That's me. How can I help you, Emmet?"

Emmet blinks, apparently taken aback. "Oh, you remembered my name. I...I wasn't expecting that."

That's kind of sad, Good Cop doesn't say. After all, he did a background check on Emmet after the whole Piece of Resistance thing and he'd be a poor excuse for an officer if he couldn't even learn the guy's _name._

"It's only polite," Good Cop says instead. "Did you need something?"

"Yeah, actually, we're having a party in Cloud Cuckooland in a couple of weeks, and we wanted to invite you!"

Good Cop raises an eyebrow, because he finds that a little hard to believe. Cloud Cuckooland is almost exclusively a Master Builder's realm, and Master Builders have been understandably iffy about him--to say nothing of their opinion of non-Master Builders in general.

"Really," he says.

Emmet grimaces and says, "Okay, actually everyone says that inviting you is a terrible idea because you blew up those buildings and tried to capture us and something something Bad Cop, but you're a really cool guy and you helped us out, so _I_ thought that you should get an invitation."

"That's very nice of you," Good Cop says. "But I don't think your friends like me very much. I wouldn't want to intrude."

That's blatantly false--the last part, anyways. He would just really rather not be in a crowded area full of Master Builders. With the amount of vandalism and collateral damage they've caused over the years, he's developed a healthy distaste for them and their methods.

"Hey now, don't worry!" Emmet says with a wide grin. "I'll talk them around. They just don't know you're a good guy."

Good Cop's smile widens, just short of the point where it would start to look strained. He might be called Good Cop, and he tries his best to be a good person, but he _really_ wouldn't go so far as to say that he's "a good guy". He's aided and abetted Bad Cop's less than virtuous methods without guilt, not to mention the _work_ he's done for Business.

Without going into details, he, even more than Bad Cop, is intimately familiar with the smell of melting flesh.

He honestly doesn't care what the Master Builders think of him. They can scream about him being the scum of the earth or say he's some kind of pushover or a saint dropped out of the very sky itself if they want. That's their business. But it is nice of Emmet to try and turn them around on his account.

Nice, but unnecessary.

Suffice to say, Good Cop has no intentions of attending any party in Cloud Cuckooland. The thought of being in close quarters with so many Master Builders at once makes his stomach roil. They're too self-involved, too comfortable in their supposed superiority. It makes for poor conversation and he can easily think of a dozen better--and more enjoyable--ways to spend his time.

"I'll think about it, buddy," Good Cop says.

* * *

_Emmet, in his endless reserves of tact and grace, decides to tell Wyldstyle over lunch._

_Predictably, Wyldstyle almost chokes on a fry. "You_ what?" _she asks in a slightly strangled voice._

_"I invited Good Cop to the party. I think he's excited to come," Emmet says through half a mouthful of hamburger. "But he's worried that people don't like him."_

_"Emmet," Wyldstyle says slowly. "People_ don't _like him._ I _don't like him."_

_"Really? He's such a cool guy, though."_

_"Didn't you say the same thing about Business? Right before getting dragged off to get_ melted?" _Wyldstyle asks. "Look, trust me on this, you don't want to deal with those guys. There's a lot of bad blood there."_

_"Oh, come on," Emmet wheedles. "He's nice and everything. He remembered my name and he almost gave me a glass of water that one time!"_

_Wyldstyle suppresses the urge to sigh in exasperation. Emmet's such a good guy, but sometimes he's just so_ dense. _"Emmet. I'm going to cut you some slack because you joined the fight against Business really, really late. But there are some things you_ don't do, _and messing with Bad Cop is one of them."_

_"But he's not Bad Cop, he's Good Cop."_

_"Good Cop_ is _Bad Cop!" Wyldstyle snaps back, maybe a bit louder than necessary, based on the concerned looks that get shot their way. She shakes her head and pinches the bridge of her nose. "Sorry. I shouldn't have yelled. It's just..."_

 _She comes short, unable to_ explain.

_She's lived the last few years running into hostile territory to get in contact with Master Builders and shuttle supplies and information or, especially recently, searching for the Piece of Resistance. The whole time, she's been terrified of what would happen if she made a mistake, got unlucky, ran just a little too slowly._

_She's gotten into scrapes with Bad Cop personally--well, no, that's not quite true. She made the mistake of fighting Bad Cop_ once, _and, well, if she ever had any doubts as to why Business had hired some_ normal _person to hunt Master Builders..._

_The man fights like a force of nature._

_It's the closest she's ever come to getting caught, and the only reason she hadn't was because Batman and some of his friends had jumped in at the last second to get her out._

_She doesn't know everything Bad Cop's done, but she doesn't need to. She knows enough, and seeing Good Cop walking around like everything's normal, like everything's okay, that puts her on edge like nothing else._

("We're in," Batman radios in over the sound of distant explosions.

Wyldstyle glances at the floor plans for the Octan Tower and says, "Copy that. We're on the manufacturing level, and we're going to come in through the cooling vents--"

"Actually, I'd really rather you didn't."

Wyldstyle's heart leaps into her throat and she whirls around. It's Good Cop and _crap,_ she's ruined everything, she and Emmet are going to get melted down and there's nobody to save them this time.

She can't believe how embarrassingly _easily_ they've been caught. The most she can do is stall, try to run, so she charges at him and--

He grabs her by the wrist and a whirl of motion later, he's got her face-down on the ground. "Please don't," Good Cop says, not even breathing hard. There's a crashing sound as robots handily subdue Emmet. "I don't want to fight you guys."

"Great way of showing it," she growls at him.

"Yes, well, you're a little late."

Wyldstyle's heart jumps. "You're lying," she says, because there's no other option. She can't accept that they've come this far just to get shut down before they've even started.

"I'm really not," Good Cop says. "Business left with the Kragle about ten minutes ago after your friends smashed the front door open, and between the security systems and the few thousand robots you've put on high alert, you won't get out of the Tower in time." There's a motion that might be a shrug, and Good Cop says, "At least, not on your own."

Wyldstyle's eyes widen. He can't mean...

"This would've gone much easier if you'd given me the Piece of Resistance like I'd asked, back in Old West." Good Cop eases off and helps her up to her feet. "Come on. From what I've seen, the Kragle takes a long time to warm up. If we hurry, you can still make it."

"What--" Wyldstyle manages to say.

"Oh, and I'll be taking this back, thank you," Good Cop says, picking up the building plans from the floor.

"You--you dropped those in Cloud Cuckooland on _purpose?"_ Wyldstyle asks, incredulous. "You, why are you helping us?"

Good Cop just shrugs and smiles disarmingly. "Buddy, I think you have bigger concerns right now.")

 _They only got out in time to stop Business because of him, and she still doesn't know_ why. _She knows how quickly he can switch and she just...can't imagine that he isn't plotting something._

 _"Even if Good Cop is_ somehow _fine, we can't invite him without inviting Bad Cop," Wyldstyle reasons. "And if you think what Good Cop did to Cloud Cuckooland was bad--"_

_"It wasn't that bad," Emmet interjects._

_"--you don't want to know what Bad Cop could have done. He would have...destroyed the entire thing. Blown it to pieces, sunk every last bit to the bottom of the ocean. I don't want him in Cloud Cuckooland."_

_"Okay, but it's been like a month and Good Cop and Bad Cop haven't done anything bad, have they? They've just been helping out with the Bricksburg reconstruction," Emmet says. "If Business is a good guy now, why can't they be, too?"_

_"Business is...different," Wyldstyle says. "We've worked with him, we know he's okay now."_

_"Well, we didn't know that in the beginning," Emmet says. "I think we should give them a chance."_

_Wyldstyle sighs. Emmet's got a point, she can admit that, but even though he's the Special and saved the day, he's not a Master Builder. He doesn't_ get it. _Bad Cop and Business aren't the same, no matter what he thinks. Business just...wants to be friends and do weird things like build submacopters and he's honestly kind of an idiot sometimes._

 _Emmet doesn't_ know _Bad Cop, or he wouldn't be so eager to forgive and forget--or maybe he would. Emmet's more forgiving than most._

_"How about we ask Princess Unikitty?" Wyldstyle asks. "It's her home, so she should get the final say."_

_"Okay," Emmet agrees easily._

_With that, Wyldstyle lets the matter drop. It's not the resolution she wants, but it'll have to do._

* * *

Good Cop dreams.

He dreams of firefights, of tracking Master Builders in pins and strings across maps, of the eerie hum of Business's Think Tank.

Dreams are strange for him. They always have been, a little bit, but ever since Bad Cop left, they've been...overwhelming.

They're visceral. Too lurid, too close to the surface, too loud to discern the words from the noise. He dreams of a blaster that's hot in his hands, of sparking sodium lights and red eyes, of the acrid smell of burning plastic. He dreams of blood in his mouth and teeth breaking loose under his fists and that--that's not right. Bad Cop's the one who fights like that, not him.

He doesn't know what's going on, but he thinks that maybe it's Bad Cop, or whatever's left of him, filtering back. He doesn't know anything about Business's Scepter or how it works, how cleanly it would have wiped Bad Cop away, and maybe these are the last jagged edges of Bad Cop's memory.

Sometimes, if he listens, he hears a soft voice saying _wait,_ saying _you need to stop,_ and he thinks it might be his own.

He never hears Bad Cop's voice.

That's probably for the best, he thinks when he wakes up gasping for breath and reaching for phantom wounds that have long since healed. It's bad enough to relive memories in Bad Cop's skin; he doesn't need to live what he's lost, too.

It wouldn't do to lose himself in dreams.

* * *

Massive property damage and slow reconstruction aside, it's astounding how much Bricksburg really hasn't changed at all since Taco Tuesday.

Being in the unique position that he is, Good Cop feels like he notices it more than anyone else--civilians are too unaware of Business's machinations and the Master Builders are too far removed from normal life. Business, of course, is too far removed in general.

Master Builders are free to roam where they like, now that he's not coming after them, and yes, he supposes that's a victory for them, but what does that mean for everyone else?

True, Business has eased off on trying to micromanage everyone's lives and the building regulations and the constant instructions, but the _people_ are still the same. Just because the walls are coming down doesn't mean everyone will suddenly get itchy feet and start mingling or will even _want_ Middle Zealand or Pirate's Cove or Old West in their urban sprawl. The instructions are the only thing most of these people have known for years now, and they work, as offensive as that may be to Master Builder folk. 

The fact is, the world that the Master Builders saved from Business's Kragle is not the same world that Business forced them out of and he would not put it past them to simply _forget_ that.

If Master Builders decide to start building when and where they like--and knowing them, they might very well do so--the citizens of Bricksburg who haven't built a thing in their lives, who live in the implicit security that their house will still, in fact, be a house the next day, might start to think that Business was right, persecuting the Master Builders and keeping them well away from the general populace. And then there'll be another big problem to deal with--one that's not so easily fixed with a prophesied Special and a magical artifact.

That's the problem with a silent resistance: when it's over, nobody notices. Even with the debacle that was Taco Tuesday, people were faced with a cosmic battle of Business against some unknown insurgents and no context. It may be obvious to the Master Builders who was in the wrong, but everyone else? They don't even know that the Kragle was _Business's_ idea.

It's a recipe for disaster.

So Good Cop helps repair the Kragle damage, helps situate people who lost their homes and businesses to fallen Micromanagers that haven't been cleared out yet, and above all, he keeps an eye out for unrest.

The Master Builders may have won Taco Tuesday and saved the world, but Business is still in power; he hasn't lost yet.

The fight isn't over.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Business visits Good Cop for the first time since Taco Tuesday. Things go about as well as expected.

Good Cop is in the shower when he hears someone banging at his door.

"Just a minute!" he shouts as he hurriedly turns off the water.

It takes a little longer than a minute to quickly dry himself off and put some presentable clothes on to answer the door, and--

It's Business.

Of course it is.

He steps back from the peephole and takes a deep breath, trying to calm the spike in his heartbeat. He supposes he should count himself lucky that he hadn't run into Business anytime in the last five weeks, but of course it wouldn't last forever, and of course he would show up at the most inconvenient time possible.

Not that _any_ time would be convenient. Historically speaking, a one-on-one meeting with Business has never gone well.

Good Cop takes a moment to gather up a smile that doesn't look _too_ fake--not that he thinks Business would notice--then pulls the door open.

Business looks...different. Business suit, red tie, big hair as usual, but there's a different air around him, in the way he glances to and fro, shifting from foot to foot. Nervous--though why, Good Cop isn't sure.

"Business," he says, and Business is visibly irked by the lack of a title, which, _good._ "Sorry for the wait, I was a little, um, preoccupied." He gestures vaguely to his wet hair. "What brings you around?"

Business rubs the back of his neck. "You haven't been in to work," he says. "I wanted to, uh, check up on you."

Which, coming from Business, can really mean _anything._ Good Cop clasps his hands behind his back and forcibly pushes away his frequently-entertained thoughts of violence. Now is not the time.

"Oh," he says. "Well, you hired me to hunt Master Builders, so my job is obsolete now, isn't it? I've been around the city. Rebuilding."

Business nods, and some of the tension in his face eases. "Good, good. How are you doing? I hear your parents are better now, and--"

"How about you come on inside?" Good Cop asks, maybe more sharply than necessary. "Seems like we have some catching up to do."

He brings Business in, closes and locks the door behind him as he gestures for Business to take a seat in the dining room.

His mind is racing.

He's not sure what Business _wants._ If Business really just wanted to 'check up on him', he'd be good to go, but bringing up his parents...

That's a little bit of a sore subject. Certainly not a conversation to have in the doorway.

"What have you been up to?" Good Cop asks as he puts on a pot of coffee, and his hands don't even shake.

"Oh, you know," Business says. "I've been with the Special and his Master Builder friends a bit. We're getting along pretty well, now that I'm not trying to kill them."

"Good for you," Good Cop says with a smile. "I'm glad you're getting out of the office. Being surrounded by robots all the time isn't good for you."

"Yeah, it's nice," Business says, sounding somewhat bewildered. "You know, they took me out for burgers the other day. Burgers! The good kind, too."

"It sounds nice." Good Cop pulls a mug out of the cupboard and runs it under the sink. "If you don't mind me asking, was there something in particular you wanted to talk about?"

"Yeah, uh, yeah." A somewhat--guilty?--look crosses Business's face. "How's, um, Bad Cop? Is he okay?"

That makes Good Cop freeze for a second, flooding out apprehension with disbelief. Does Business honestly not _know?_ All of his talk of 'making sure Bad Cop doesn't let the Special go again', the vindictive pleasure he took in wielding his Scepter, and he still thinks Bad Cop is somehow possibly _okay?_

He resumes rinsing off his mug. "He's not talking much."

"Oh, I guess...I guess that's fair," Business says. "But he wasn't, uh, very talkative to begin with, was he?"

"No," Good Cop says. Bad Cop didn't talk much, and he'd only spoken less after working for Business. After some point, there was nothing worth saying anymore.

"I guess he was violent enough to make up for it," Business continues.

He keeps talking after that, but Good Cop doesn't hear a word of it, because hearing Business speak so blithely about Bad Cop feels like a fist clenched directly around his heart.

How _dare_ he.

Good Cop can't imagine the sheer _gall_ Business has, to interrupt his life, to come in and think everything is fine and normal, and insult Bad Cop after _everything_.

Bad Cop was only violent because you needed him to be, Good Cop doesn't say. He didn't want to murder, he didn't want to torture, but he did it because _you_ made it necessary.

_(I can't, I, there's too much blood. I'm going to kill him if I keep going, I can't--_

stop. you don't have to do this.

_We still don't know where their base is! This is the only lead we have!_

then let me take over. i'll do it.

_No, no. I don't want you to have to hurt people. I know you hate it._

this is _killing_ you, you moron! i can do it, i know you can't

_No, I'll be fine. I just. Give me a minute, G. I'll be fine.)_

"He was good at his job," Good Cop says evenly as he pours coffee into two mugs.

Business chuckles. _Chuckles!_ "Yeah, he was. Lots of good work. Shame about what happened with the Special, but it's for the best now, isn't it?"

Good Cop carefully sets his hands on the counter to keep them still, trying _very hard_ to not think of the white Artifact Chamber, of the Kragle falling from Bad Cop's hands. "Yes," he says, and it takes most of his not inconsiderable self-control to keep his voice steady. "You know better now."

"Right! Things are good now. A lot better now."

Good Cop smiles, even as his mind drifts to the bottle of potassium cyanide he'd confiscated in an evidence mix-up however many years ago, lying in his bottom drawer, wrapped in a sock.

It would be _so easy._

He could make his excuses to get something from his room, come back and slip some of the salt into Business's coffee. Looks like sugar, extremely water soluble, the toxicology guys had told him. Tastes acrid, smells a little like almonds, not everyone can smell it. Lethal dosage is less than a gram.

He had a lot of practice disappearing bodies under Business, what was one more? Nobody would suspect nice little Good Cop, one of Business's staunchest supporters and even if they did, what could they do? Arrest him, perhaps, but they'd have to _catch_ him first.

Please. Master Builders couldn't handle Bad Cop at his best. They wouldn't stand a chance against Good Cop at his worst.

_(Stop. Please. You don't want to do this, G._

you're right, i don't. but we need information. i'm getting it.

_That's his family! They're not even Master Builders!_

calm down. i haven't hurt them.

_...But you will, won't you?_

if he talks, i won't need to.)

"How do you like your coffee?" Good Cop asks Business. "We have some milk, or a little half and half if you'd prefer. Sugar, too."

"Oh? You don't have to--"

"I insist," Good Cop says. "It's only polite. Coffee's better with company anyways."

"Well, if you say so..."

They talk about--something, Good Cop isn't really paying attention. He prepares the coffee and slides it over to Business along with a leftover pastry.

He doesn't put cyanide in the coffee, but it's a very close thing.

* * *

_"I went to Bad Cop's place," Business announces to his new companions when he arrives at their little cafe the next day._

_"Oh?" Benny asks. "How did that go?"_

_"Really well, actually!" Business says. "I thought he'd be mad at me, but he's doing pretty good now!"_

_"Mad at you? Did you do something bad?" Wyldstyle, or maybe Lucy, asks._

_"Sort of," Business says. "His parents were Kragled and--"_

_"Wait, you Kragled his_ parents?" _Wyldstyle bursts out. "And he_ forgave _you?"_

 _"Well, I mean, I didn't_ really _Kragle them," Business says, because it was Good Cop who did that, after all. "And they're all better now, so it's okay!"_

_"You're sure he's doing all right?" Benny asks. "That sounds like kind of a big deal."_

_"Yeah, totally sure. We talked, had some coffee together. Reminisced over old times."_

_An awkward hush falls over the group, and it takes Business a few seconds to realize why 'old times' might not be such a great thing with this crowd._

"Anyways," _he says, "about the party coming up. How big of a disco ball were we thinking of? Because believe me, I can get a_ big _disco ball."_

* * *

Good Cop is, and always has been, an organized person.

He likes to keep his days structured--it makes it easier to keep a handle on everything's that going on and to focus on what's important.

Bad Cop was never like that, of course. He was goal-oriented if nothing else, barreling off to feverishly hunt the next set of Master Builders or crush the latest buds of the resistance until Good Cop grabbed him by the scruff and told him to _eat something_ before he _passed out._

It's probably that single-minded and downright _ruthless_ determination that made Business hire him in the first place. 

_("On one condition," Bad Cop says._

_"On one-- You've got some nerve, don't you?" Business asks, crossing his arms. "But fine, what 'condition' do you have?"_

_"Good Cop comes with me."_

_That seems to strike Business speechless. He splutters a bit, then says,_ "Why? _No seriously, why? I want you to track Master Builders. He'll just hold you back."_

 _"This is non-negotiable,_ Business. _You either get both of us or neither of us."_

why are you antagonizing him? this is a good opportunity for you. you don't have to--

_Shut up, G. I've had to hide before, and you're not doing that. You're coming along, or it's not worth it._

_"Oh, ha! Ha, good joke," Business says. "You had me going there for a bit. I mean--" he looks at Bad Cop's face and trails off. "You...you're serious."_

_"If you want me on this job, I'm only doing it with Good Cop," Bad Cop says. "Otherwise, you might find some_ difficulties _with your Master Builders."_

oh, for-- b, please don't do this.

_Shut up. I know what I'm doing._

_Business's eyes narrow dangerously. "Are you_ threatening _me?"_

 _"Who knows?" Bad Cop asks. "People say I'm impulsive. You could try to stop me, but I've proven that your_ robots," _he spits, gesturing at mangled steel limbs all around them, "aren't any match for me." He forces a shrug. "Alternately, you hire Good Cop with me and we_ both _take care of your Master Builder problem."_

_There's a long pause._

_Business looks at him consideringly, then smiles slowly. "You've got some cheek, Bad Cop. But I like your moxie. Fine, I'll hire on your_ friend." _The smile slides off of his face. "But I'm not taking insubordination from either of you. Or you'll see how bad_ I _can be.")_

Well, Good Cop isn't like that. He understands the value of pacing himself, of thinking through his actions, and most of all, keeping his cards close to his chest.

The best plans are the ones they never see coming, after all.

So he sits in his living room turning a small hermetically sealed bottle of potassium cyanide between his fingers, and thinks.

It wasn't compassion that stayed his hand, in the end. Not really. He doesn't like hurting people, but he has no compunctions about committing this particular murder if he has to.

No, it was Bad Cop's memory, more than anything else. Bad Cop would've been so ashamed of him, if he'd gone through with it. And yes, maybe Bad Cop could, under the same circumstances, be angry enough to kill Business--not with poison, of course, but a blunt object, swung with enough force to crush the skull--but he'd regret it so much afterwards. He'd be dying with guilt, and he'd force himself to atone, any way he could.

It would disappoint his parents, too. Only one son left, and he's a murderer--cold-blooded, and not even the excuse of Business's orders to soften the blow. And he wouldn't lie to them, they don't deserve a son who lies straight to their faces. So no, he couldn't do that to them, either.

He sets the poison on the coffee table with a soft _clink._

Business came seeking some kind of closure yesterday, he's sure of that much. Closure for his own sake, some reassurance that his monstrous acts weren't as monstrous as they were. Maybe his new Master Builder friends weren't giving him the validation he needed.

Perhaps it's not the best that he'd played along with Business's game, fed him the lines that would ease his conscience, but even if he'd dropped the smile and yelled and thrown things, he doubts that Business would have listened. He'd have made it out to be a solitary case, a distraught man in the aftermath of a singular calamity, too far within the blast radius to be assumed rational.

Business was always just a tiny bit delusional, that way.

Whatever Business's reasons, the meeting has only solidified Good Cop's feelings.

Business needs to pay.

He won't kill Business or otherwise arrange Business's death. As much as Good Cop wouldn't miss him, as horrible as Business is, he _is_ changing, and he _is_ trying to be better, and that's...that's worth saving.

Everyone who seeks forgiveness can receive it. Pa had taught him that, a long time ago. But he'd also taught him that forgiveness doesn't come easy, and people who are wronged have the right to withhold it.

Well, if Business thinks he wants forgiveness, then fine. There's nothing wrong with that.

But he's going to have to _work_ for it.

* * *

It's Emmet, of all people, who ends up giving him the idea.

"--Unikitty says you're super duper welcome, and we're going to have snacks and a disco ball and there'll be loads and loads of people," Emmet says in his rambling way as he helps Good Cop haul bricks.

"Master Builder people?" Good Cop asks, still a hundred percent not planning to attend said party.

"I mean, yeah, but there are some not Master Builders too!" Emmet grunts and tosses his bricks into the back of a truck. "Like me, or Business! And you!" He pauses. "You're not a Master Builder, right?"

Good Cop almost drops a brick on his foot, because _Emmet isn't a Master Builder?_ Apparently he missed that memo.

He pushes the thought aside and shakes his head. "Business, huh?" he says. "You guys seem to get along with him pretty well."

"Yeah, he's a lot better now!" Emmet says. "I mean, I don't really know him, but Lucy says he's a lot better now. He says some awkward things, but he really just wants to have friends and stuff."

"I see. What do you think of him?" Good Cop asks.

"Me?" Emmet replies. "Uh, well, I think he just...wants people to care about him. During the Kragle thing on Taco Tuesday, he said something about not feeling special and how nobody ever cared about what he thought and that's, that's not true. I mean, people never...really cared about me that much," Emmet says. "Nobody even remembered my name, you remember that, right? Except that's not true because _you_ remembered my name, which is cool! But I mean, now I've got all of these awesome friends and they care about me and, and Business is kind of the same. He just wants people to like him."

"How insightful of you," Good Cop says as he starts to work through more rubble. "But yes, Business never had many friends in my tenure. It's good that he has some now."

"Aren't you his friend?" Emmet asks.

There's an instinctive _absolutely not_ rising in Good Cop's throat, to say that Business disliked him at best and wanted to _eliminate_ him at worst, or that Bad Cop was only worth Business's time as long as he followed orders and was _useful._ Perhaps if Business had cared more, he wouldn't have pushed for the brutality he did, and Bad Cop could have spent some of the last several years _not_ in a perpetual storm cloud of a mood before getting unceremoniously terminated.

"Well, I was never around much," Good Cop says, and he even manages to put a regretful lilt to his tone. "Too busy hunting Master Builders, you understand."

"Oh, right. You were doing that," Emmet says. "But you guys still worked with him, right? What was he like?"

Good Cop passes some bent conduits to Emmet and tries to think of an answer.

Business was...not an easy person to put into words. Obsessive, certainly, and a little manic besides. Alternately meticulous in his planning and extremely oblivious to the impact of his actions. Needlessly cruel, not very compassionate or empathetic--Good Cop doesn't imagine anyone who was would put hundreds of people through the Think Tank the way Business did, all without remorse.

Or, he amends, thinking of what he's personally put Master Builders through, without some consideration to the consequences and alternatives.

Business was self-aggrandizing and dangerously overconfident. He enjoyed having the spotlight on him at all times, hated when people disagreed with him--so much so that he excised every human in his life except for Bad Cop and the little studio crews and had them replaced with robots, and even then, he was trying to reduce 'human error'. He angered easily, as well--there was a reason why Bad Cop used to wear the helmet all the time.

In short terms, Business was not a great person.

"He wanted to be bigger than himself," Good Cop finally says. "The world was too big and there wasn't enough of him to fill it. I don't think he was very happy."

"Oh," Emmet says. "I guess that makes sense. He doesn't tell us a lot about himself, you know? I just wish we knew more about him."

And that's when the gears start turning in Good Cop's head.

Business wants forgiveness, to have his actions vindicated, to know he's not a bad guy anymore, but nobody really _knows_ him. It hits upon so many things that Good Cop has always found distasteful about the way Taco Tuesday was resolved, most of all the lack of _accountability_ on Business's part.

Why does Business deserve a fresh start after Taco Tuesday? Business _isn't_ some normal person, his actions _aren't_ without lasting consequences, so it's hardly fair to pretend that he is and they are.

Bad Cop, who was a little squeamish about blood, often fought with a blaster or a baton, or excepting that, his fists and weighted-knuckle gloves. Good Cop, on the other hand, rarely fought, which let him hone his own weapon of choice: _information._

While Bad Cop rubbed out the physical traces of the Master Builders' resistance, capturing them and throwing them to Business's mercy, Good Cop spent his time eradicating them from memory. He killed their momentum, compromised their lines of communications with false rumors, and managed Business's propaganda so no civilian was even _aware_ of the war occurring in their very streets.

Fortunately, it's much easier to start a war than end one.

Even the Master Builders don't know everything about Business, as much as they think they do, and it's only right that Good Cop goes ahead and levels the playing field for them.

Them, and _everyone._

* * *

_"Hey," Emmet says as he swings into the pizza parlor where Lucy and some of their other Master Builder friends are meeting. "Sorry I'm late, I got held up with cleanup duty again."_

_"It's no problem," Lucy tells him. "Did anything exciting happen?"_

_"Well, I ran into Good Cop and let him know he's invited to the party. I think he's going to come," Emmet says._

_"You've been talking to Good Cop a lot," Batman says. "What's so great about him?"_

_Emmet pauses for a second, because being around Batman is kind of awkward with the 'dating his ex' thing and he still has a hard time telling the difference between Batman's threatening growl and his normal growl. It's not that he thinks Batman_ will _hit him or anything, but the guy is scary in general._

_"I mean, he's a nice guy," Emmet says. "He's fun to talk to and he's happy all the time. He's really not as bad as you guys say he is."_

_"Say that when he turns into Bad Cop," Batman mutters._

_"I mean, he hasn't done the...Bad Cop thing. He's seriously fine."_

_"It's not that we don't trust you," Lucy says as she hands a slice of pizza to Emmet. "It's just...why Good Cop? There are a lot of other people to talk to. And us."_

_"Good Cop's at the reconstruction site every day," Emmet says, taking the pizza. It has some unidentifiable toppings on it, but whoever chose them_ probably _knew what they were doing. "And I mean, I sort of know him, and he's easy to talk to."_

_"Well, Benny and Metalbeard are at the reconstruction site a lot of the time, too. I don't think you talk to them nearly as much," Lucy says._

_Benny briefly glances up from his pulpy science fiction paperback. "I do stuff in the air, though, and Metalbeard's usually over by the docks. Emmet's on ground work."_

_"Yeah," Emmet says. "What Benny said."_

_Lucy seems to accept that because she shrugs and asks Unikitty about things going on around Cloud Cuckooland, turning the discussion to other matters. Emmet gratefully takes a bite of his dubious-looking pizza._

_He's been a bit down lately, though he's done his best to hide it. Vitruvius had pulled him aside the other day and told him that, well. He wasn't really the Special. There was_ never _a Special because the prophesy was made up and he was just a lucky (or unlucky) guy who got the Piece of Resistance stuck to his back._

_And, well, it was cool that he got to save the day and that he has all these friends now to eat pizza or go to parties with, but he can't help but feel like a bit of a phony. They cared about him because he was the Special, and Business backed down because the Special told him that he was worth something, too._

_He doesn't know if they're only still hanging around him because he's the Special, which he isn't. He doesn't know why they would_ want _to hang out with him. He's not even a Master Builder, and he didn't really help that much in beating Business other than the talking bit at the very end._

_So yeah, he's been talking to Good Cop. Good Cop doesn't expect anything out of him, Special or Master Builder or Defeater of Lord Business. It's nice to be able to talk about normal things like TV shows (that Good Cop doesn't watch, but he's interested at least) or new restaurants or just fixing up the city._

_And, well, Good Cop_ lets him help. _Emmet knows he's not real useful with the Master Builders when they're zooming ahead to do whatever it is that Master Builders do, tearing bricks apart and building...everything, it seems. At least at the reconstruction site they're always happy to have another pair of hands to clear out debris._

 _Emmet really only knows how to build when he's following instructions, and he's_ really good _at it, but none of his new Master Builder friends seem to care that much about it, which._

_It's not as bad as having none of his co-workers remember his name, but it kind of stings._

_"Emmet?" Lucy asks. "Hello, earth to Emmet?"_

_"Huh? What?" Emmet asks, snapping his head up._

_"Benny asked if you wanted to go with him on his spaceship visit to the station. I'm not going, zero gravity makes me sick, but maybe you wanna go?" Lucy says._

_Emmet smiles. "Yeah!" he says. Spaceships are cool, and he hasn't really been in one before._

_Even as he agrees, he feels guilt settle in his gut. They're so nice to him. How will they react when they find out he's not the Special after all?_

_He's scared to tell them, so he'll just. Enjoy it while he can._

* * *

Good Cop and Bad Cop are very different people; anyone would say as much.

After all, Good Cop is organized, Bad Cop is not. Good Cop likes sweet, Bad Cop likes savory. Good Cop enjoys talking to people, Bad Cop prefers to stay silent. Good Cop has quite a lot of patience, Bad Cop frequently has to be stopped from punching someone in the face.

Bad Cop always griped that he wasn't _anything_ like Good Cop, no sir, not at all, but Good Cop never really saw it that way. All their differences, they're all so...inconsequential. When it comes down to the things that _matter,_ he and Bad Cop are very much the same.

He wants to be where he's needed most. He believes in justice, in retribution. He knows complete confidence and unshakeable determination, the ruthless drive that burns away anything that stands in his path. He has power in his hands and if he wants to, he can make the world _tremble._

The two of them aren't invincible, far from it, but there are very few things that can stop Bad Cop--or Good Cop--when they have something to fight for.

Bad Cop fought for Business, to remove the Master Builder scourge, turned himself into a monster whose name alone could strike fear into their hearts. All the while, Good Cop stood beside him, clearing away debris with bared teeth.

And then...

And then.

 _("Well, Good Cop, I never thought this would happen, but you're on the job. Do better than your_ companion, _or you'll be going the same way."_

_Good Cop smiles blandly and salutes. "Yes, sir."_

_He leaves Business's office, his hands loose at his side and his posture relaxed, all while his mind_ burns _from rage, from the absence that shouldn't be. Already, he's formulating plans, thinking of where to strike._

 _Perhaps one day, Business will look back on this moment and know it for what it is: a_ mutiny.)

Business has made many mistakes, but murdering Bad Cop was the second-biggest one he has, or ever will, make.

The first one was underestimating Good Cop.

* * *

The beauty of Good Cop's revenge is that it's _simple._

Business, egotistic as he is, has already done most of the work for him.

It's easy to stop down by the Octan Tower to pick up some things from his office--he hasn't been in since Taco Tuesday, after all--and if he takes a quick detour to the records archive to pick up some choice files, then visits the broadcasting station to fiddle around with some of the equipment, well, nobody has to know.

Afterwards, he deletes the relevant video surveillance footage and edits the access logs so it looks like he was in his office the whole time--with top-level security clearance, it's hardly five minutes' work.

He takes some things from his office--Bad Cop's favorite jacket, the photo of him and his parents, his pink briefcase--and leaves the building, whistling a jaunty tune.

Bad Cop wouldn't approve of these methods, Good Cop thinks as he puts a large envelope in the mail. Too underhanded, too manipulative.

Well, he thinks, Bad Cop isn't here anymore.

* * *

_"Hello?"_

"Hey, it's Good Cop. Is this Emmet?" _Good Cop says over the phone._

_"Oh, yeah! Good Cop, what's up?"_

"About your party this weekend, I'd really like to come, but I don't have any way of getting to Cloud Cuckooland..."

_"Woah, no problem! Benny's taking me and some other people in a spaceship up. It's really fast, and it's fun and you're totally welcome to get a ride with us!"_

"Thanks, Emmet. You didn't have to do all this for me, you know."

_"Hey, anything for a friend, right?"_

"...Yes, I...yes. Thank you."

* * *

Good Cop stares at his countertop listlessly and sighs.

He hasn't baked since before Taco Tuesday, and it shouldn't be this hard. Especially to just...start.

For whatever reason, he doesn't want to make anything, but he needs to, he's going to a party full of people who don't like him and as much as he doesn't care if the Master Builders think he's a horrible person, it would make his life easier if they didn't, at least for the however many hours he's obligated to remain in their company.

Unlike Bad Cop, he generally tries _not_ to get punched in the face.

He slumps against the refrigerator, running a hand through his hair, and flips through recipe cards without reading them.

It's not an indecision thing--he'll just make something easy like brownies or a crumble and that'll be fine--but it feels like moving to even get the flour or mixing bowls out on the counter is just too much _work._

It's the silence.

Bad Cop was never exactly _chatty,_ but he was always there and he listened to everything Good Cop had to say, and not being able to talk to him anymore is...difficult. Good Cop feels like there's too much in him to share these days, without a confidant, and his thoughts are all too loud and unformed and turbulent.

It's fine, he tells himself. He listens to radio, makes small talk around town, and keeps the thought of Bad Cop from his mind.

But times like this, there's no denying he _misses_ Bad Cop. They used to bake together--well, they did everything together, for obvious reasons--and it was...good. Relaxing.

Bad Cop would constantly complain about how the amount of flour was 'close enough' and 'so what if the butter is a little melted' while Good Cop had to explain, no this isn't like cooking, it really does matter; yes, there's a difference between bread flour and pastry flour; no, don't you dare eyeball that baking soda!

_(Happy birthday, G._

it's not our birthday.

_Whatever. Open it._

...you got us a scale.

_Now you can get off my case about how I scoop flour. A hundred and twenty grams is always a hundred and twenty grams, right?_

aw, i didn't know you cared so much.

_No, I'm tired of wasting time with your cakes and pies. This way you can quit complaining whenever I try anything._

i love you, too, b.)

With a heavy sigh, he picks out a coffee cake recipe card and starts pulling out ingredients. Butter and sugar, creamed; milk and flour, added alternately; egg whites, beaten until stiff...

It's not the same without Bad Cop making sarcastic comments about how _looking_ at the batter was going to give them heart disease or how it wasn't fair that everyone liked Good Cop more just because he brought cookies to eat.

(if you brought in your red braised pork, they'd like you just as much.

_Shut up, G.)_

Really, there's nothing to baking besides reading a card and watching the digital scale count up the grams as he pours in ingredients, then mixing everything together. There's no real technique or skill--just impersonal, mechanic busywork. A robot could do this and it would taste the same, he thinks as he crumbles streusel over the batter and slides the pan into the oven.

He sits by as it bakes, reading some nigh-incomprehensible book about game theory. His eyes keep slipping upwards on the page, until he's fairly sure he's read the same paragraph about zero-sum games at least twenty times without retaining a single word of it.

He's killing time. Time until his coffee cake bakes, time until Business goes down, time until _Bad Cop dying_ isn't such a stupid big deal.

Somewhere around the thirtieth time he's read _a participant's gains or losses must be balanced by an equal loss or gain by other participants,_ he gives up the book as a bad job and sets it down, scrubbing his hand over his face in frustration.

He should be better than this. Bad Cop is gone, there's nothing he can do about it, and he _knows_ it. He's accepted it. So why is he _like_ this? Why is it so difficult to do something as simple as _bake a cake?_

He growls and stares up at the ceiling like the answers will be written out in the water stains. He can deal with this, and he will. He doesn't really have a choice.

Later, when his coffee cake finishes, it smells delicious, like warm cinnamon and brown sugar, and it's probably one of the best coffee cakes he's ever made.

Good Cop can't help but feel kind of betrayed.

* * *

The day of Emmet's party--or more correctly the Master Builders' party--Good Cop leaves sometime around five in the afternoon to meet up with Emmet and friends in the city park. Apparently, that's the safest area to land a spaceship.

Good Cop has some opinions about landing something with rocket engines in the middle of a public space that's full of flammable vegetation, but he keeps them to himself. There's nothing he can do about it at this point except think about the expense reports he'll probably have to file later.

He's there early--working for Business was good for his sense of punctuality, if nothing else--and there's nothing to do but try to convince himself that this is still a good idea.

By all accounts, he doesn't want to go to this party. He's not a fan of the Master Builders and he is well aware that most of them hate him and Bad Cop, and it'll be a miracle if he manages to get through it without people screaming at him.

But his distaste of Master Builders is far outweighed by his need to see Business _burn_ for what he did to Bad Cop, and if he wants to avoid possible future investigation, it's best to have an alibi when everything goes down--and what better place to be conspicuously present than a crowded party where everyone hates him? The fact that Business will be at this party himself is a happy bonus.

He leans on a bench and closes his eyes for a bit. By nine o'clock tonight, everything will be well and truly out of his hands--just the way he wants it to be.

There's something relieving about that, even as the anticipation eats away at him. His hands are already shaking with adrenaline, with the rush of knowing that he's about to do something he can never, ever take back. Whatever consequences this has, he'll take them. It'll be worth it for Bad Cop.

He takes a breath. Counts to ten. Lets it out.

Everything will be fine.

"Good Cop!" Emmet shouts. "Good Cop! You made it!"

Good Cop smiles and looks up to where Emmet and someone dressed up in an absurd black costume (what was his name? Batman?) are approaching him.

"Hey, buddy," he says. "Ready to go?"


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Against his better judgement, Good Cop goes to a party.

_Batman has opinions on Bad Cop. About eighty percent of them are contempt and loathing, and the other twenty percent are grudgingly impressed._

_Bad Cop isn't a Master Builder, but to call him 'normal' is_ extremely _misleading, otherwise known as_ wrong. _The man is probably as far from normal as anyone could be; he fights like a rabid animal, wild and impossible to constrain without getting into_ real _trouble and he's_ smart, _too. Not book-smart, necessarily, but smart enough to pull clues together and weasel out Master Builders seemingly no matter how hard they tried to hide._

_Coming from the world's greatest detective, that's a pretty high compliment._

_He, like any fortunate Master Builder, has kept a healthy distance away from Bad Cop, but he's not ignorant of Bad Cop's misdeeds. He's seen his friends, the way they go cold when people talk about him._

I wanted to die, _they say._

Don't let him take me again, _they say._

 _And to do that to someone, to push someone's limits until they scream for mercy and then_ keep going, _that's the worst kind of filth that exists._

_He looks at empty spaces where some of his friends used to be, and he curses Bad Cop's name deep into the night._

_He doesn't trust 'Good Cop', because someone who hurts people like he did doesn't change so easily. He doesn't like how 'Good Cop' talks and smiles and cajoles, drawing people in like a Venus flytrap, except instead of whatever a Venus flytrap has, 'Good Cop' has dumb glasses and unassuming civvies._

_(A bomber jacket, turtleneck, and jeans,_ seriously? _They don't even fit him that well. Clearly hunting and torturing Master Builders didn't do much for his sense of style.)_

_The worst villains, Batman knows, are the ones who don't think they've done anything wrong, and in that case, 'Good Cop' is the worst of the worst._

_Batman looms in the back of Benny's spaceship, watching with a critical eye as Bad Cop talks to Emmet and Benny. He'd planned to go to the party in his Batmobile, but then he'd heard that Benny would be picking up 'Good Cop' along with Emmet, and well,_ they _might trust him, but Batman knows better._

 _So here he is, making sure Bad Cop doesn't_ try _anything._

_"--and how about you, Batman?" Bad Cop asks._

_Batman hisses at him. He doesn't know what they're talking about, but he wants no part of it._

_Bad Cop raises an eyebrow. "All right, then."_

_Much to Batman's dismay, Bad Cop just turns back towards Benny, talking about telescopes or something and soon enough, Benny is talking about neutron stars and gravitational collapse and Bad Cop looks like he's actually_ interested _in the conversation, even making courteous pauses for Emmet to join in._

_No wonder they're so taken. He's absolutely insidious._

_Batman growls to himself and just tries to loom harder._

* * *

Cloud Cuckooland is a little hard on the senses.

Obviously, he knows this already, since he'd launched an attack on it less than two months ago, but either he blocked part of it out of his memory or the Master Builders have made it even _more_ of an eyesore than it already was.

It looks like the architectural equivalent of dumping a box of art supplies all over the floor. It looks like someone decided to start building and never stopped. It looks like an attempt to replicate an abstract painting in three dimensions except parts of canvas was torn and stitched to bits of other paintings.

That kind of thing.

Looking at the city makes his head hurt if he thinks too hard, because there's no structural logic to _anything._ 'Master' Builders these people may be, but Good Cop thinks his concerns about the structural integrity of these buildings are completely valid.

The less said about the colors, the better.

At least his assault on the town hall doesn't seem to have slowed them down, he thinks before directing his eyes towards the slightly less offensive ground.

"You guys made it!" he hears someone extremely _squeaky_ say.

Good Cop risks a glance upwards and it's...some weird pink cat thing. A very elegant pink cat thing, true, but definitely weird.

"Unikitty!" Emmet says as he rushes forward and gives the cat thing a huge hug. "I love the work you guys have done around here. It's so _exciting!"_ He pulls away and glances back at Good Cop. "This is Princess Unikitty. She's really cool and she likes rainbows and she gets really scary when she's mad. Unikitty, this is Good Cop. He's nice to talk to and he doesn't watch TV."

Good Cop's eyebrows go up in surprise. He didn't know Master Builders had royalty, much less that Emmet was friends with them. He smiles and says, "I'm pleased to meet you, Princess."

"It's great to meet you, too!" Princess Unikitty says, before leaning in and adding, "It's okay, we're not mad at you for shooting bombs at us, because you helped us and you're a good guy now!"

"...ah, thank you?" Good Cop says, because really, there isn't an appropriate response to that. He raises his pan full of coffee cake. "I baked something for you guys. Thought you might like it."

"Oh! That's wonderful!" Princess Unikitty says, neatly popping the pan out of Good Cop's hands and passing it to someone nearby. "I think we're going to have lots of fun and--" she looks back at Good Cop and trails off.

"Is everything okay?" Good Cop asks.

"Are _you_ okay?" Princess Unikitty asks, eyes wide. "You look so _sad._ "

"I'm...sorry?" Good Cop responds, because where did _that_ come from? "I'm doing well, thank you."

"Hm," Princess Unikitty says. "Well, you know that we're all your friends and you can talk to us, right?"

"Ah, I'll keep that in mind," Good Cop says, becoming increasingly eager to get away from this conversation. "I'm going to see who else has arrived. I'll see you later, then, Princess."

He gives a quick polite bow and goes further into the city.

Emmet, following after him, asks, "What was Unikitty talking about?"

Good Cop shrugs. "I haven't got the slightest idea."

* * *

The party is okay.

It's very _festive,_ certainly, with fluorescent streamers and music and a disco ball that's more like a disco _boulder_ for how impractically large it is. Seriously, it looks like the sort of thing that would be rolled down a large hill as part of an extremely shiny siege defense, and the tiny cord that's holding it up doesn't instill a great sense of confidence.

(Good Cop quite reasonably resolves to stay well away from being directly under the monstrosity, or near it in general.)

The food table is interesting, for a lack of a better word. Out of over thirty plates and dishes, Good Cop recognizes maybe three, and a lot of the rest are rather alarming colors and textures, but they taste surprisingly good, and Good Cop resolves to get the malva pudding recipe before the night is out.

There's also a large selection of drinks of varying bright colors and fizziness. Good Cop watches as other people mix ladles of different drinks together and the colors don't diffuse like normal drinks would--it's more like a lava lamp or tie-dye, and Good Cop strongly suspects magic at work.

(For his part, he sticks to the translucent periwinkle-colored drink that tastes pleasantly like mint. He doesn't touch the punch bowl; judging by how it smells, it's _heavily_ spiked.)

Party games are seemingly everywhere, with piñatas and lawn darts and more exotic things like cupcake eating contests and zip-lining and something that looks suspiciously like gladiatorial combat. For plausible deniability reasons, Good Cop steers clear of that last one.

Really, calling it a 'party' feels like the understatement of the century. It's practically an amusement park, for all of the noise and activity and the _scope_ of the thing. There's a lot of energy and noise and it's...

...it's a little much.

Good Cop does enjoy parties, but that's because he likes getting to know new people, not so much the...everything else. And while he's interested in talking to people, nobody seems very interested in talking to him, if the few extremely truncated conversations he's had so far are anything to go by.

He's not going to complain if people who come to a party with friends want to be with their friends and not talk to strangers--or former enemies. That's fine, it's just that without people to talk to, that only leaves the lights and sounds--very nice lights and very exciting sounds, granted--which Good Cop finds terribly exhausting.

Well, he's not B; he won't force himself to do something he doesn't want to do if there's nothing to be gained for it. He takes his plate of foods with unpronounceable names and wanders around until he finds someplace a little more quiet.

Cloud Cuckooland isn't bad, he thinks as he watches people throw glitter-filled water balloons at each other. Once he's out of the thick of the action and can get past the mess and illogicality of it all, there's definitely a beauty to the chaos. It's the... _freeness_ of it, he thinks, the way everything and everyone simply _is_ without thought to organization or restriction.

He's not sorry for blowing up the town hall when he was hunting the Special--that's what he had to do--but he's glad he didn't have to destroy more than that. As much as he dislikes Master Builders, they're still people who deserve to have a place they can call home just as much as anyone else, and there's really no place he can imagine that is more suited to Master Builders--or less suited to him.

He leans back against the wall, feeling the sounds of music vibrate under his feet and muffled shouts in the cool breeze. A glance at his watch tells him it's just past seven.

It's not the best party he's ever been to, but it's certainly not the worst, either.

* * *

_Emmet is not lost._

_Sure, he has no clue where he is, but he's not lost--he's just...misplaced his friends, is all. He went back to grab something from the buffet table for like three minutes, and when he turned around, Lucy and Business and Metalbeard and everyone else was gone!_

_So he's looking for them._

_More specifically, he's looking for Metalbeard, who's not very good at blending into a crowd on account of being very shouty and also very very tall. The problem is, here in Cloud Cuckooland, with all of the everything built everywhere, pretty much everything looks like it could potentially be a Metalbeard._

_He takes a nervous sip from his fruity pink and green drink. He was having a lot of fun dancing and doing karaoke and Lucy said that they could do the zipline sometime later before the fireworks started going off, but now that he's alone, the party is kind of loud and scary._

_A lot of people here recognize him and have been trying to talk to him and shake his hand and stuff. And it's nice that they want to know him, but he_ knows _that they really want to meet The Special, not Emmet the Construction Worker, because Emmet the Construction Worker is boring and likes to follow instructions and these guys don't like that. Without his friends here, he feels hopelessly lost._

_No, not lost. Just misplaced._

_He weaves through clumps of people, trying to see black hoodie or blue spacesuit or bat ears, but between all of the people and the moving lights, he's not having a lot of luck._

_"--can't believe they'd do that! I mean, what kind of an idiot doesn't know the difference between a 3137 and a 122?"_

_"I know, right? I think you'd have to at_ least _use a 4180, or you're not going anywhere. Dinky little wheels like that-- Oh, hey, you're the Special, aren't you?"_

_Emmet looks up. It's a lady in a bright green dress and another one in a purple ballgown, and they're both looking at him. "Uh," he says. "...no?"_

_"Oh look at him, he's so cute," the lady in purple says, reaching out to pinch Emmet's cheek. "And so modest, too! Cecelia was just telling me the best story about a train she saw on the way here."_

_"Yeah, I was just saying, they couldn't even use the proper wheels!" Cecelia giggles and sips her drink. "I guess they couldn't find a set of 2927s? I shouldn't make fun of them. They don't really know how to build, do they?"_

_And this is another thing. People keep asking him about Master Builder things, which is sometimes okay when they're asking about building construction, because he's all over that, but this stuff about ID numbers and parts is_ not _his forte. Maybe if he really was the Special, he'd actually be smart and great at talking to these guys, but all he's getting now is a bunch of people asking him questions about things he doesn't know and expecting him to know all the answers._

_"Uh," Emmet says. "I, um..."_

_"--Emmet, is that you?"_

_Emmet turns back towards the voice and...it's Good Cop. He wasn't expecting that, especially because he hasn't seen Good Cop since they arrived._

_"Hey, Emmet, glad I could find you," Good Cop says as he approaches. "Benny was looking for you, I think he was worried you'd get lost."_

_Emmet feels a surge of relief. He's not going to be alone at this party for the rest of the night. "Sorry," he says to the ladies, a bit quickly. "I don't want to worry my friends, so I've got to go."_

_Good Cop bows his head politely towards the ladies and gently tugs Emmet away by the arm._

_"Where's Benny?" Emmet asks._

_"I don't know," Good Cop says. "I haven't seen him."_

_"What? But you said--"_

_"I lied. I didn't think those girls would let me pull you away if_ I _wanted to talk to you. They were more likely to know Benny and let you go without arguing if you were going to talk to him."_

_"Oh." Emmet pauses. "Wait, why did you come over if Benny wasn't looking for me?" he asks. "You know, not that, not that I mind."_

_Good Cop glances back at him, eyebrow raised. "You looked very uncomfortable, Emmet. It was obvious that you didn't want to be in that conversation."_

_"...Oh," Emmet says. Do people do that? Rescue other people from awkward conversations? Nobody's ever done that for him before. "Wow, thanks, Good Cop. That was really nice of you."_

_Good Cop huffs. "Well, it wasn't very nice of them to antagonize you. I was able to help, so I did."_

_Emmet's about to respond that those ladies weren't really_ antagonizing _him when Good Cop abruptly stops and Emmet collides with him. They're next to a huge star-shaped fountain with rainbow colored water and sparkly fish, close to the people juggling flaming clubs. Emmet has no idea where in the city they are._

_"Hey, uh, Good Cop?" Emmet asks. "Where are we going?"_

_Good Cop looks back at Emmet and smiles. "Well, you look a little lost, so I think we ought to find your friends."_

_"But you're my friend, right?" Emmet blurts out._

_Good Cop's eyebrows go up for a moment. "Well, what do you think?"_

_"I think we're friends," Emmet says. "I mean, we talk about stuff and do work in the city together and--"_

_"Well, there you go, then," Good Cop says with a shrug. "Let's go find your_ other _friends, then."_

* * *

Searching for a person in Cloud Cuckooland during a party is like searching for a needle in a haystack.

It's harder, actually, because at least with a haystack there are shortcuts like lighting the hay on fire, which, while he got into trouble for that that one time, definitely made finding the needle much easier.

(He's a little embarrassed to admit he was the one who suggested it. Bad Cop had wanted to do it the 'proper' way, just to prove he could, but Good Cop convinced him that it wasn't worth the time and bonfires were cool, weren't they?

As for why the needle was in a haystack to begin with, the simplest answer is that he'd had a better understanding of hypothesis-based science than idiomatic language at the time. That has since been corrected, but his affinity for fire and explosives has not.)

Regardless, Good Cop and Emmet end up wading through several crowds, looking for somebody familiar, which would be easier if people weren't constantly stopping them to try and talk to Emmet.

Obviously, Good Cop has no problem with Emmet meeting new people, but Emmet equally obviously does not enjoy getting approached by overly familiar strangers.

At some point, the number of Master Builders walking up to Emmet and saying, "Hey, you're the Special, aren't you?" crosses a line and Good Cop pulls Emmet away a little more quickly than strictly necessary.

"Take off your vest," Good Cop tells Emmet.

Emmet does a double-take. "Woah, what? Why?"

"You're too easily recognizable in safety orange. It'll be easier to find your friends if people stop interrupting us," Good Cop says as he shrugs off his olive-green bomber jacket and hands it to Emmet. "Wear this. It might be a little loose, but it should be okay. I'd also give you something for your face and a hat, but I don't happen to have those on me."

Emmet pauses. "Don't you have sunglasses?"

Good Cop gives him a _look_ , because he already wears glasses, why would Emmet assume he--

...oh. Right.

"It's starting to get dark," he says. "Sunglasses would ruin your vision. We can't find your friends if you can't see them."

"Oh, okay," Emmet says as he puts on the jacket. "Then what about face painting?"

"Face-- where do you see that?" Good Cop asks. He turns towards where Emmet is looking and, lo and behold, it's a large and colorful face painting booth. It's been a _very_ long time since he's done any sort of painting, face or otherwise, but for their purposes, it's perfect. "Yes, that's great. Good idea, Emmet. Thank you."

Emmet smiles even as his face turns bright red. Good Cop leads them to the booth and has Emmet sit.

"I only know how to do animal faces," Good Cop says as he pulls over a tray of paints and desperately tries to remember his volunteer days at the county fair. "So what would you like?"

Emmet asks for a dalmatian painting and seems inordinately happy about it. It's a fairly fast job; Good Cop isn't really trying to be artistic and a dalmatian is easy, especially when Emmet is much more agreeable to staying still for delicate linework than small children ever were.

About five minutes later, Good Cop rinses off his brush as he waits for the paint to dry and says, "Sorry to have to put you through all of this hassle. I know you just want to find your friends again."

"Hey, it's all cool," Emmet says. His face is covered in white and black paint and he is _much_ more difficult to identify now. "We're being like, uh, spies or something. In disguise, right?"

"Yes, that's the idea," Good Cop says. He sets the paints down and screws the lid back on. "You're surprisingly popular, Emmet."

Something distinctly _guilty_ crosses Emmet's face. "Yeah," he says. "I know."

Good Cop hums to himself thoughtfully as he cleans up. He doesn't know why Emmet would feel like he's done something wrong, but Emmet's the kind of person who probably feels guilty about breathing in the wrong direction.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Good Cop asks. "You don't have to, but if you want to, I'm happy to listen."

Emmet's mouth twists a bit, evidently thinking about it. "You, um," he says, then trails off. He takes a deep breath. "Do you think I'm special?"

"Special?" Good Cop asks as he takes a seat across from Emmet. "In what way?"

Emmet shrugs. "I don't know, special. _Special,_ cool, unique, something. All these people keep trying to talk to me and they all think I'm some really great guy, and I...I don't think I'm the cool guy they're looking for, because I'm boring and normal and I like to follow instructions."

Ah.

"I don't think you're _not_ special, if that's what you're asking," Good Cop says. "And you're not boring or unintelligent or anything else you might be thinking."

"But I don't know anything about Master Building, and everyone keeps coming up and talking to me like they think I do!"

Yes, that sounds like something Master Builders would do, Good Cop doesn't say.

"Master Builders are good at Master Building. That's what they do, Emmet. _You_ don't have to be good at Master Building to be smart or interesting. You know a lot about building, even if it's a different type of building than what they do." Good Cop shrugs. "I mean, I don't know much about building at all and you don't think I'm dumb or boring, do you?"

Emmet looks horrified at the thought. "Of course not!"

"And it's the same for you, Emmet." Good Cop shifts in his chair and says, "Sure, you're normal, but normal doesn't mean you're not special, too."

"But I'm not!" Emmet blurts out more than says. "Special. I'm not the Special. The prophecy was all fake, Vitruvius told me, and I'm not interesting or talented or great or important or anything, but everyone wants me to be. I didn't even help that much to save the world, I just had the Piece of Resistance stuck to my back and--and I talked to Business a bit but that's really...that's all." His voice cracks as it all comes out in a rush.

Good Cop blinks. That was...unexpected.

(The prophecy was _fake?_

He files that away for later consideration. It's not important right now.)

"Look, Emmet, look at me," Good Cop says softly. "Prophesied Special or not, you're still you. And you might not be a Master Builder, but you're a lot of other things. You like talking to your neighbors, you like growing plants, you have friends, you watch TV, you help out with Bricksburg reconstruction because it's your home and you love it. You're normal, and that's not a bad thing."

Emmet frowns.

Good Cop holds out his left hand. "Look at my hand. It's a normal hand, five fingers, perfectly functional." He wiggles his fingers. "But it's not the same normal hand that you have, it's not the same normal hand your friends have." He flips his hand palm down. "I've got bony knuckles, see? And here you can see a scar from when I fell out of a tree and broke my finger." He flips his hand palm-up. "I've got callused fingertips, here. I played the fiddle for a long time, you can see that. And here, the side of my finger, this is my writing callus--I've done a lot of paperwork, to say the least."

Emmet kind of squints at him, not entirely sure where this is going.

"I do a lot of different things with my hands, Emmet. I can bake, I can play instruments, I can fix things, I can write, I can paint faces. And that's normal. Your hands are normal, too, but your hands don't do the all the same things mine do. Maybe our hands look similar at first glance, but if you look closely they're not the same at all.

Good Cop sighs. "What I'm trying to say is, Emmet, being normal isn't _bad_ and it also doesn't mean you're the same as everyone else. Being the Special or not doesn't change who you are, what you can do, or what you like. And yes, you might not be the kind of cool and special that these Master Builders are looking for, but you _are_ special, because you're _you_ and all the things you do. If other people don't see that, that's their problem, not yours."

"...Really? You think so?" Emmet asks.

Good Cop nods. "I do. I really do."

Emmet looks at Good Cop, then glances downwards. "I...I haven't told my friends about the prophecy," he says softly. "I don't know what they'll say."

Good Cop takes a long breath. He's vaguely flattered that Emmet trusted him enough to tell him first, but he understands that compared to the colorful personalities that Emmet spends time with, he's more likely to accept the whole fake prophecy bit than they are.

"Well, I don't know either, Emmet. But they're going to find out," Good Cop says gently. "And I think they'd rather they heard it from you. They're more likely to be upset with you not trusting them than because of the prophecy. It's not your fault that you ended up being caught up in all of this, and they know you; they're not going to fault you. The prophecy may be made up, but it still happened, didn't it? You and your friends defeated Business and saved the world together."

"And you," Emmet says. "You helped, too."

"I suppose I did," Good Cop says with a slight shrug. "Look, it's been almost two months. They may have met you because they thought you were the Special, but they're still friends with you now because you're Emmet, not because of some silly prophecy. I wouldn't worry."

Emmet sniffs. "Okay," he says. "I...I guess I'll tell them. You--you're a good friend, Good Cop. You're so nice all the time, you know? You don't have to do that, but you do, and, um. Thanks."

Good Cop's not sure how to respond to that, because this is all simple courtesy. Listening, talking, reassuring, it's really the least he can do, and this level of gratitude is...disproportionate. He doesn't need it. 

"Tell them when you're ready, and not a moment before," Good Cop says. He glances at his watch; it's almost seven forty-five. "Now let's go and find them."

* * *

_"I don't see anything," Batman says over the walkie-talkie._

_"Okay," Wyldstyle replies. She takes a deep breath. "All right. We've checked all the places we've already been today, so if I were Emmet, where would I be wandering around?"_

_She pinches the bridge of her nose and tries to think. Emmet went to get desserts and never came back. Most likely, he'd gotten distracted by something and got lost, so obviously they need to find him now before he manages to walk into a lion's mouth or something._

_It shouldn't be this difficult to find him, because Emmet has many talents, but laying low is_ not _one of them. The problem is, he doesn't seem to be_ anywhere.

_It's been maybe forty minutes now, and she's seriously worried. Sure, it's Cloud Cuckooland and nobody's going to want to hurt him, but Emmet is a force unto himself when it comes to doing something idiotic._

_She swings her way up to a lamp post to get a better look around the crowds, looking for a flash of bright orange._

_"Lucy! Hey!"_

_Wyldstyle almost falls off of the lamp post in surprise, but she grabs it and manages to swing down with most of her dignity intact._

_"Woah, are you okay?" Emmet asks. "That kind of looked like it hurt."_

_"Emmet!" Wyldstyle grabs him and gives him a big hug. "I was so worried! We thought you'd gotten lost and, I don't know, got hurt or something! We've been trying to look for you and--" She pauses, then takes a step back. Emmet's got white dog face paint and a vaguely familiar green jacket on. His orange construction vest is nowhere to be seen. "What are you wearing?"_

_"Oh, this?" Emmet asks, gesturing at his jacket. "A lot of people were bothering us when we were looking for you guys, so I got a disguise. Like spies and stuff, right?"_

_"We? Who's 'we'?" Wyldstyle asks. If any of their friends had known where Emmet was, they would have just called, right?_

_"Oh! Right, Lucy, I was talking to some people and they were getting kind of weird about the Master Builder thing and--" he turns back towards...something, then says, "...oh. I guess he's gone."_

_"...Okay," Wyldstyle says._

_"But anyways, I'm so glad we found you! The fireworks are gonna start soon, right? I hear they're really big here, and they don't have big fireworks in Bricksburg, you know? We've gotta find everyone else and get a good spot!"_

_"Right, but who--" Wyldstyle cuts herself off, then says, "You know what, never mind. I'm just happy you're safe. Let's go find everyone else and we can go see the fireworks."_

* * *

Good Cop watches Emmet catch up with Lucy, then decides that's as good a time as any to go.

He's very aware of Lucy and her friends' opinions of him, and he feels no need to impose.

It's eight twenty.

* * *

Whoever said that Cloud Cuckooland had the greatest fireworks in the world was _not_ joking.

He has certainly never seen a larger volume or variety of fireworks in his life. The colors vary from neon greens and fluorescent blues to scarlet reds and sunny yellows, and the technician was both skilled and creative enough to make the explosions into shapes like stars and cats and pirate ships. It's extremely impressive, and magic is more likely than not involved.

That being said, he would probably enjoy this more if he had a pair of ear defenders, he thinks as yet another set of fireworks bursts into clouds of flash and smoke and he clamps down on his ears even more.

It's during the second wind of fireworks that someone taps him on the shoulder and he very nearly elbows them in the face when he turns around.

It's Business.

If only he'd elbowed him in the face.

Business says something that starts with "Good Cop, can't--", but the rest is lost under the noise and the dark.

"I can't hear you!" Good Cop says. "Fireworks!"

Business says something else like, "Hope...good...I'm so..." but Good Cop isn't trying as hard as he probably could to figure out what it is.

Good Cop glances at his watch. It's eight forty. "Maybe later!" he says before leaving in the opposite direction.

He very much doubts that there will be time for them to talk later.

* * *

Of course, the inevitable happens.

One second, Good Cop is talking to a clown about fire-eating techniques, the next, he hears footsteps behind him and--

_WHAM._

The floor is looking lovely today, he thinks as he blinks stars out of his eyes and wonders where his glasses have disappeared to.

 _"Bad Cop,"_ he hears someone snarl.

Probably the person who just punched him in the face, if he had to guess.

"You've got some nerve," the person--a man wearing a bicorne? Good Cop sees, now that he's peeling himself off of the pavement--continues. "Back for a second round? Going to try and bring us in again?"

The man grabs Good Cop by the collar and drags him to his feet, and yes, definitely a man wearing a bicorne.

"Well? Got something to say for yourself?" the man growls.

Good Cop carefully rotates his jaw--nothing's broken or loose, but it hurts quite a lot. "That wasn't very nice of you," he says lightly. "A 'hello' would have worked just as well."

That's apparently not what the man wants to hear, because he roars and throws Good Cop to the ground. Good Cop manages to break his fall, but only just.

So, Good Cop thinks as he takes a few skittering steps away, bad news, the man is a bit upset, good news, he's is no longer within arm's reach. He's faintly aware of several Master Builders carefully backing away from them--mostly him, it seems, which is unfair considering he's unarmed and _isn't_ the one who ran up and punched someone apropos of nothing.

He tries to remind himself why he thought coming to this party was a good idea, because his jaw is going to ache for the next week, he has no idea where his glasses are, and he's surrounded by people who might legitimately attack him.

It's less than ideal.

"Just to be clear," Good Cop says, holding up his hands, "I don't want to fight. We can settle this peacefully."

"Peacefully?!" the man barks as he swings at Good Cop's face. "Where was your 'peacefully' when you brought us in, Bad Cop? Where was your 'peacefully' when you attacked our city?"

Good Cop deftly sidesteps the man's attacks and says, "Look, buddy, I know you're upset, and that's okay. You've all been through a lot, and I--whoops!" He ducks beneath a right jab and continues, "I've done bad things to you guys, and I'm sorry. What I did was wrong, you didn't deserve what happened."

(That's only about half true at best, but he's trying to control the situation, so perhaps a little dishonesty can be forgiven.)

Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, the words do very little to placate the man. He charges at Good Cop, swinging what might a small club.

"There is--" Good Cop rolls out of the way of an attack _"--no need_ for this! I'll listen to what you have to say, but I can't do that if you're--khak!"

Elbow slams into Good Cop's stomach, and he goes reeling backwards into a brick wall.

The man pushes Good Cop against the wall and grabs his chin, forcing him to look up. His breath smells like brandy. "I don't want your goody-two-shoes routine, Bad Cop."

Good Cop carefully and painfully takes a deep breath. "Bad Cop's not available right now," Good Cop says evenly. "But I can take a message, if you'd like. Suffice to say, we're both extremely sorry."

The man growls and lifts the club--and, seeing it from close-up, it's actually much spikier than Good Cop realized. "A little late for 'sorry', don't you think?"

And before Good Cop can say, "Well, no," the man swings at him and--

Good Cop grabs his wrist and twists, pushing the man's arm into a wide swing. The club swings too far left, and Good Cop pulls, unbalancing the man too far forwards.

But he's against the wall, there's no space to move, no space to nicely and neatly subdue the man and Good Cop decides that he needs to end this fight now or it's going to get ugly, fast.

He grabs the man's coat and yanks _down_ , kneeing him directly in the stomach. The man gags and drops his weapon and he when he staggers to defend himself, Good Cop stomps on his instep.

The man makes an undignified howling sound and Good Cop grabs his collar and throws him into the wall.

The man's forehead makes a loud _crack_ against the brickwork and he goes down in a heap of red frock coat and disoriented growling. He doesn't get back up.

A hush falls over the crowd.

He looks down at the man. He's still breathing and conscious, and there's no blood except for some scrapes, but he's not going to be getting up any time soon.

He looks up at the crowd. Between the poor lighting and his missing glasses, he can't really see what they're doing, but based on the murmurs, they're preparing to attack if necessary.

Good Cop holds his hands up. "I don't want to fight. I understand that you may be angry at me, but if you attack me, I will defend myself. I'll listen if you talk."

There's silence, and then--

"Guys! _Guys!_ The TV! On the TV! There's something--" somebody shouts as they burst into the crowd. "--about Business and he's--"

Good Cop looks at his watch.

It's nine.

* * *

_"--it's my favorite time of the day! Time for, drumroll please, Lord Business's favorite things! Ha ha!_

_"As of yesterday, ninety-five percent of voting machines are made by Octan now, and I'm working on_ taking care of _the last five._

_"Man, seriously, being evil is great! Can you imagine if I had to do this the normal way? Anyways, I've been having problems with Master Builders again--"_

_"--the walls are going great now, coming along great! Now, we've had some interruptions, but thankfully I've hired someone on to take care of it. Say 'hello', Bad Cop!"_

_"Sir, what are you doing?"_

_"Oh, come on, Bad Cop, don't be like that! It's just a little something to remember the great times to come! Now, smile for the camera!"_

_"I'd...really rather not."_

_"Ugh, fine, whatever, you can be a wet blanket if you want to. Let's get on to the important part of--"_

_"--kind of a dump, with all of the Master Builders ruining everything all the time, so we really need to build it from the ground up. Problem is, I don't have the time to come up with building plans for all of the everything going on. I'm much too busy being evil and taking care of dissenters for that, so...voila! My latest and greatest invention, the Think Tank!"_

_"Sir, are you really going to_ demonstrate _this? On camera?"_

_"Of course! I don't see why not! Come on, bring it over here so everyone can see."_

_"You canker blossom! You fustilarian! Mark my words, the Man Upstairs will banish you to the Abyss with impunity!"_

_"Mm, what a dirty mouth you've got, Lady Ophelia. We'll take care of that, won't we? This is all quite easy to use, we just press this button here and...there we go! The screams of Master Builders really brighten my day, don't you agree, Bad Cop?"_

_"...If you say so, sir--"_

_"--Eight and a half years! It's been a long time coming. Any of you who've stuck with me for this long--and that's really just me, because man, it'd be a disaster if anyone saw these videos, ha ha!--you all know that's when I got my hands on the Kragle! Well, it's finally ready for deployment, and not a second too soon, because we just heard something about the Special, you know?_

_"Now, I all know you're missing Bad Cop's sunny personality today, but that's because I want this to be a surprise for him, too. Because_ this _is my magnum opus, the Tentacle Arm Kragle Outside Sprayer! The final S is silent, of course._

_"I know you all want to see a demonstration, and so do I, honestly, but I'm going to hold off on it, because I've got the perfect test subjects for it..."_

* * *

Cloud Cuckooland is silent.

Silent except for Business's digitized voice from the television and the speakers and every functional broadcasting device in the word.

_"--look like that. Come on, where are your Master Builder friends hiding?"_

_"I'll die before I tell you, Business!"_

_"Oh, come on now, that's no fun. I don't really want to hurt you...much. Just tell me what you know and I won't even give you to Bad Cop--"_

There's over a thousand of these video logs, tucked away in the recesses of Octan's server farms. All of them of Business talking about his topical issues and crimes. As far as Good Cop understands, Business was frustrated about being evil and not having someone to brag about it to.

Obviously, Business never meant for these logs to be made public, but he never deleted them, either, and now, in the 'Where are My Pants?' time slot, across every broadcasting frequency, almost everyone is guaranteed to see it before anyone can even _attempt_ damage control.

The logs range from innocuous, like musings about ice cream flavors or the new shoes he'd bought, to the morbidly horrific, demonstrating new inventions and robots, often on Master Builders or political enemies. _Everything_ is there, including--

_"--sir, I understand, but this is unnecessary. His sister, his father, they're not involved in this, we shouldn't--"_

Good Cop feels like his throat's closed up.

 _(We can't do this, G. This is... Business has gone too far. The Master Builders were one thing, but we can't bring in random civilians like this, that's_ criminal.

...i know. i don't like it either.)

_"--it won't happen again, sir, I'm sorry! You--"_

(--stop, stop! b, get out of my way, he's going to--

_No, I don't want you to get hurt, I can take it, I'll be fine--_

stop it, b, this was my fault, don't you dare try and be a hero--)

_"--Builders you wanted. They're in the holding cells. Do you want me to take care of--"_

(b? are you okay? we don't need to do this if you're not up for it. i know you don't like this any more than i do, it's not fair that you--

_I'm fine._

stop saying that! you're not! you don't talk, you don't sleep, you barely even eat! you're _killing_ yourself, b!

_Stop, G. Please. I'm tired. Can you really blame me?_

...no. i don't blame you.)

There's static in Good Cop's ears, pounding in his chest, and he's faintly aware that he can barely feel his hands.

He wasn't prepared.

He knew that Bad Cop would be in these videos. He was there, of course he knew, but he wasn't _ready_ and hearing his voice again, so loud and clear and _real_ \--

Good Cop heaves, and he barely makes it to a trash can before his entire dinner makes a reappearance.

It hurts, it _hurts_ so much, he feels like his heart is going to rupture, or his head is going to pop like an overinflated balloon, he's dizzy and his legs are shaking, but there's nothing he can do to stop the words he's sent over the airwaves. He's fired the gun, and there's no stopping the bullet now.

_Bad Cop._

Bad Cop used to be so _much_. He used to be _happy_ , he used to be _whole_. Ruthless he may have been, they'd both been, but Bad Cop cared so much about everything, burned with passion in everything he did and--

Business snuffed him out. Slowly and surely, Business had put Bad Cop to bloody work, tearing down everything he believed in, one pillar at a time. He stripped Bad Cop of his love, his ambition, his _fire,_ and extinguished him with a smile on his face.

He takes a deep breath. Counts to--

He shudders and heaves again, his knuckles white on the rim of the trash can and his eyes wet with tears. Someone grabs him and asks something, but he snatches his arm away.

 _"Don't touch me!"_ he screeches.

And then he runs.

* * *

He doesn't know where he is.

He doesn't care.

He just sits there, under some awning, thinking, trying to block out the horrific noise.

This is all for Bad Cop, he repeats to himself like a mantra. Everyone deserves to know what Business did, what he'd done over the years.

And besides, he thinks between gasping breaths, Bad Cop had taken a lot of hurt for him, for as long as he could remember. Good Cop could suffer through this. He could take some hurt for Bad Cop, fight back now that Bad Cop isn't around to anymore.

(you didn't have to do that, you know.

_He made fun of your glasses! Of course I was going to punch him!_

you really don't need to, though. you don't think my glasses are dumb, so who cares?

_I care, okay? So shut up, G._

...thanks. I love you, too, b.)

He hasn't cried since he broke his leg in grade school, but he's crying now, sobbing into his knees in some godforsaken street in Cloud Cuckooland because he _misses_ Bad Cop so _much._

There's no point in thinking about what-ifs, he knows that, but there's nothing to stop the thoughts circling his mind like carrion vultures, saying you should have stopped him before it was too late, saying you should have run, saying he wouldn't have done it if it weren't for you.

But he's gone, he's _gone,_ he's not coming back, and Good Cop has never felt so alone.

Eventually, the broadcast ends and silence falls once again. It's oppressively heavy, and he feels like he can't breathe under it all.

He sits there until he's got no more tears to cry, and then for a while longer.

_tap, tap, tap._

Good Cop slowly opens his eyes to the sounds of footsteps approaching and looks towards them. He squints against the glare of a flashlight and--

"Hey," Benny says, holding out Good Cop's glasses. "I think, um. We should probably go."

* * *

_The trip back to Bricksburg is quiet._

_Only one person on the ship has anything to say, and he's resolutely silent._

_When they land, Good Cop smiles and says, "Thank you for the ride, Benny. And thank you, Emmet, for inviting me."_

_"Oh, um, it's fine," Emmet says. "Sorry about...what happened. You're free to come to other parties, though! I'm sure Unikitty would be happy to see you."_

_Good Cop shrugs and says, "I appreciate the thought, but I think it's best for everyone that I stay well away from Cloud Cuckooland."_

_He salutes them briefly, then hops out of the spaceship and sets off into the night._

_The spaceship is silent for a long time afterwards._


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the wake of the broadcast, Good Cop has to reconcile with the memory of Bad Cop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of those extremely oblique mentions of suicide comes up in this chapter.

_"You want to help them, don't you? Finish the job."_

_His parents stand across from him, and the Kragle is heavy and cold in his hands. There's fear in his bones and only one way this can end, but maybe, just maybe, this time things will be different._

_i can't, he says as the Kragle falls to the ground. they're innocent!_

_But the words, the words that can stop everything before it begins, they never get past his throat, never leave his tongue. Instead, it's Bad Cop who speaks._

_"They're my parents. I can't do it."_

...sorry, G.

_There's words and sounds and the Scepter, and then--_

_And then._

He wakes, he sleeps, he dreams again.

Sometimes he says different things, sometimes he runs, and sometimes he fights, but the outcome is always the same.

It figures, really. He's not a hero. He's not honest, he's not loyal, he's not brave.

Not like Bad Cop.

* * *

Bad Cop is dead.

Good Cop lies awake, staring at his ceiling in the darkness of his bedroom. The words loop through his head like a broken record, sometimes in assertion, sometimes in disbelief, but mostly in accusation.

Bad Cop is dead. He's never coming back.

It's not an exaggeration to say he'd never thought it would happen. He'd always assumed, in the implicit way that never needed to be articulated, that if Bad Cop would die, he would die, too. They'd live and die together--that's the way it was supposed to be, except it's not. So now what?

Bad Cop is _dead._

He _wants_ to accept it, he _needs_ to.

If only it were so easy.

* * *

_The day after the broadcast is a disaster._

_Benny walks down back alleys and up fire escapes, watching the mobs flood the streets below. Their demands for Business, who has gone mysteriously missing, to answer for his crimes have coalesced into a massive, furious roar._

_This is...this is unreal._

_He's never seen a city get flipped upside-down so_ quickly, _not when Business brought in his first Master Builders and all but declared war, not when Taco Tuesday went down. He'd thought things had changed when they'd defeated Business, but..._

_Well, he knows better now._

_It's genuinely terrifying, the sheer_ power _these people, these_ normal, everyday _people have when they've gathered like this, marching through the streets and seething in indignant anger that he can almost_ feel _in the air. All because of a broadcast on the TV._

 _Normally, he'd laugh and wonder how so many people were silly enough to believe everything they saw on the TV, but he'd seen the broadcast, and he_ knows _that the parts with the Master Builders are real--he remembers his friends getting captured and the stories they told him after Taco Tuesday--so it's not too much of a stretch to assume that everything else is real, too, and Benny can't help but feel incredibly sick._

 _Hearing about horrors like the Think Tank is one thing, but_ seeing _it is another matter entirely._

_Benny swings his legs over the edge of the roof and looks down at all of the people surging through the streets. Many of them have signs, others are just shouting, and there are groups of people riding very large animals interspersed throughout. There's easily thousands of people down there._

_Who would_ want _to do this? The way that broadcast went out, there's no way it was some kind of accident, and there's no way that this kind of reaction_ wasn't _intentional, because the time slot was too convenient and the footage was...disquieting, to say the least._

_Benny frowns and tries to ignore the unsettled feeling in his stomach. Business and Bad Cop, they're better now, he really wants to believe it, but seeing Business, manic and completely caught up in his misdeeds, seeing Bad Cop, so coldly impersonal as he brings in Master Builders--Benny's friends--and subjects them to horrific 'demonstrations'..._

_It's hard to reconcile._

* * *

Good Cop is abruptly woken from restless sleep by his phone. He groans and flops over on his bed to answer it.

"Hello, Good Cop speaking," he says, and his voice is hoarse, but presentable enough.

 _"Son! Where have you been?"_ Ma yells at him over the phone. _"We tried calling you so many times last night, do you know how worried we've been?"_

Her voice snaps Good Cop to awareness, and he sits up, a guilty feeling in his stomach. He'd gone straight to sleep last night once he'd gotten back--he'd been too exhausted, physically and mentally, to do anything else--but he should've known they'd call after...that. "Sorry, Ma. I was in Cloud Cuckooland for a party and I didn't think to check my missed calls when I got back. I didn't mean to worry you."

 _"A_ party?" Ma asks, incredulous. _"What do you think you were-- Wait, Cloud Cuckooland? Isn't that that place Master Builders live?"_

"Yes, Ma."

 _"Why were you there?"_ Ma demands more than asks. _"I thought you didn't like Master Builders."_

"I don't."

Ma huffs and says, _"Then why were you at a party full of them?"_

"Well, I was invited. It was only polite to accept," Good Cop says.

There's a very long pause where Ma probably takes her glasses off to rub the bridge of her nose. _"Ciaran--"_

"I don't use that name anymore, Ma."

Ma sighs. _"Ciaran. What have you done? You only pull the politeness card when you're thinking something that's going to get you into trouble."_

"I...don't think I should answer that," Good Cop says, if only for the sake of his parents' plausible deniability.

There's another long pause. Ma's not an idiot, and an answer like that can really only mean so many things, but there's a difference between _knowing_ something's true and _hearing_ it in plain words. _"...We saw the broadcast,"_ Ma finally says instead. _"Is it real?"_

"...Yes, Ma. It is."

 _"Oh,"_ Ma says. _"Oh, I'm so sorry. We saw what Business did, and we're so sorry we couldn't help you--"_

"You didn't know," Good Cop says softly.

 _"I--it doesn't matter, dear. I still wish we could have helped."_ There's some muttering, then, _"Your Pa wants to talk. I'll give him the phone."_

And then, _"Son?"_

"Hey, Pa."

_"I know your Ma already told you, but we're sorry--"_

"It's fine, Pa," Good Cop says. "It's over now."

 _"It's really not,"_ Pa replies bluntly. _"Things like, like_ that _don't just end, now."_

"Yeah, I know."

 _"...Things have been pretty quiet around here,"_ Pa says. _"But you're in the city, and I'm not saying you should_ hide, _but maybe you should stay in for the next few days. We know that you were just following orders, but people still won't be happy with you, considering..."_

Good Cop thinks of the surveillance, of the executions and torture. He thinks of innocent people sentenced and Master Builders screaming from behind bars and restraints. Everyone knows now, and there's no taking it back.

"...Yeah. I know."

Pa sighs, and there's a weight to it that sounds so very tired. _"I know we haven't been there for you lately, and we're not happy about what we saw, but we still love you, son. No matter what. We want what's best for you, and...I know it doesn't help much, but we miss him, too."_

Good Cop smiles-- _really_ smiles--and says, "Thank you, Pa. I love you. Both of you."

* * *

Good Cop lies on his bed and stares at the ceiling for a long, long time.

He is not at peace. He is very, very far from any sort of calm, because last night was...

Eye-opening, perhaps. For everyone involved.

The worst part of it all wasn't dredging up memories of Bad Cop _before_ everything got to him or his descent over the years as Business broke him down. That was bad, but it wasn't anything new.

No, the worst part--the _worst part_ \--was everything he _didn't_ remember. There was so much he'd heard last night that he couldn't remember because where his memories should have been, there was a huge _blank._

It wasn't, wasn't healthy for Bad Cop (either one of them, really) to be in control so often, for so long. But Business had needed--wanted--Bad Cop more than Good Cop, and it had constantly stretched Bad Cop past his limits. At times, especially towards the end, Good Cop had felt himself...fading.

Not disappearing, of course--he doesn't think that's possible--but _dormant,_ less active, less aware of what was happening when Bad Cop wore their skin. Bad Cop hadn't talked much at that point, but to be fair, Good Cop hadn't either--he simply hadn't been _there_ to speak.

They'd both known it would happen, but Good Cop had never thought it would be so _drastic._ Now that he's thinking on it, he's finding blank spots in his memory for the last three years that are _weeks_ long at a time, gaping voids between crystal-clear memories of interrogations and interviews. He can't remember _anything_ from the entire month before the Special showed up.

_("And what should I do about their hideout, sir?"_

_"Burn it down, blow it up, I don't care. Just make it disappear, okay?"_

_"...Understood.")_

But it...it _shouldn't_ be this bad. Bad Cop had been dormant for a lot of their school years, and he'd never had memory problems like _this._

Maybe whatever Business had done had taken Bad Cop's memories with him, and that's why Good Cop was having so much trouble now, or...

 _("Sir, stop, please,_ stop!"

_"I don't think so, Bad Cop! You know what happens when you defy me!")_

_("I've taken care of the problem. I hope it's satisfactory."_

_"Oh, is that what that screaming sound was? Hm, I guess it'll do. Dismissed.")_

_("Why--why are you_ doing this? _Bad Cop, you can't--even you can't possibly be this much of a_ monster--erk!"

_"It's my job.")_

Had Bad Cop been _hiding_ things from him? Had he deliberately suppressed him, to keep him from seeing the work he had to do?

That's...

Things hadn't been good between them for a long time now. Good Cop loved Bad Cop _so much,_ but he'd been frustrated at him, frustrated at everything Business was making them do, frustrated that they were in too deep, going too far, giving too much for too little gain. By the end, Good Cop had all but given up on trying to talk, to help Bad Cop (and that was wrong, wrong, wrong, because they only ever had each other and they couldn't afford to abandon that).

He remembers how _quickly_ Bad Cop seemed to deteriorate those past few years, but how much of that was stress and Business's increasing demands, and how much of it was that he simply couldn't _remember?_

Good Cop swallows, but his mouth is dry and there's something sick roiling in his stomach.

Why? he wants to scream. How _long?_ Did Bad Cop _ever_ intend to tell him?

He clenches his fists and takes a deep breath.

It's not--not _fair._ Bad Cop left him here, _alone,_ and he couldn't even let him _be_ there for those last few years?

(--wrong, wrong, wrong--)

He's so, so tired of people making choices for him.

Was there _anything_ he could have done?

* * *

Good Cop doesn't stay in.

It's not that he thinks Pa is wrong; it's just, between... _that_ and the lack of things to do, staying home is _not_ conducive to his mental health.

He opens his closet and looks for his jacket, and when he fails to find it, he goes without.

He walks. There's no point in going to the reconstruction site after last night's debacle--nobody would be there, and he's in no mood to deal with people even if there were.

Bad Cop had _no right._

He trusted Bad Cop with _everything._ Why didn't Bad Cop trust _him?_

What could he possibly have been trying to achieve, trying to--he growls at the thought-- _get rid of him?_ They are supposed to be a _team,_ they _watch out_ for each other. 

They do _not_ force each other into _dormancy._

There's no point in wondering about the reasons, because Bad Cop is dead and can't answer for himself anymore and Good Cop is not in the mood to speculate on the motivations of an idiot.

Because Bad Cop _is_ an idiot. A stupid, self-sacrificing, self-flagellating _idiot_ who wouldn't know what was good for him if it slapped him in the face.

 _Who_ reacts to something like what Business put them through by isolating themself and removing any possible means to help? _What_ did he think was going to happen if he kept Good Cop down?

(Who was going to be there for him? His robots? They cared in their own way, perhaps, but it's not the same, it's not _enough)_

Good Cop wonders, not for the first time, if Bad Cop had some kind of death wish.

Well, it doesn't matter anymore. Death wish or not, Bad Cop is gone.

Good Cop storms down streets, turning down alleys and roads at random. There aren't very many people out in the streets, but he's sure that the unusual quiet can be attributed to the chanting he can hear in the distance.

He stays clear of those parts of town.

Some time later--he's not sure how long--he's stopped in an alleyway by a group of rough-looking people who seem a bit upset about Bad Cop's actions. The front man, a heavy-built man with red-mirrored sunglasses, snarls at him with words like 'monster' and 'disgusting', but Good Cop isn't listening.

They seem to think that since he's not wearing the sunglasses, he's not going to fight. On most days, they'd be right.

One of them charges at him with a lead pipe, and Good Cop is the only one who leaves that alleyway standing.

* * *

_Benny's assessment of the situation as 'a little out of control' might be a slight exaggeration, Wyldstyle thinks._

_She's not sure why seeing so many people so angry about Business feels so_ weird _to her, but there's something about it that just doesn't sit right. After all, even after Business had done everything he'd done to the Master Builders, they'd never been angry like...like this._

_She and Emmet walk through Bricksburg, looking for...something. They're really just wandering at this point, because their original plans of going out to the museum and getting lunch have been severely derailed._

_They're talking about cat food when Emmet stops and exclaims, "Good Cop!" before shooting off._

_Wyldstyle looks up. Good Cop is sitting on a park bench, reading a magazine with one hand and holding a handkerchief to his mouth with the other. The handkerchief has some suspicious red spots on it._

_"Are you okay?" Emmet asks, and Wyldstyle swears that's actual_ concern _in his voice. It's jarring, considering Emmet's usual personality._

 _Good Cop smiles in that beatific way he always does (and it's even_ more _infuriating when he does it with a bloody lip, what the_ heck) _and says, "I'm fine, thank you."_

_"You're bleeding," Wyldstyle points out._

_"I_ was _bleeding," Good Cop corrects. "It stopped a while ago--I'm just putting ice on it now." He shifts over on the park bench to make room and says, "And how about you? How are you doing, Lucy?"_

 _It takes a lot for Wyldstyle to not punch him out of reflex, and that's mostly because she's opposed to punching people who are already injured. He shouldn't even_ know _her name, much less use it as casually as he does. "Wyldstyle," she says frostily. "You don't get to call me Lucy."_

_Good Cop doesn't even have the decency to look a little ashamed. He simply nods and says, "Wyldstyle, then. How are you doing?"_

_At least he doesn't ask if she's a DJ._

_"Fine," she bites out. "Unlike you, I haven't gotten worked over with, what, a cricket bat?"_

_"No, just a fist," Good Cop says._

_Wyldstyle raises an eyebrow, because she's seen punches before, and the marks across Good Cop's cheek don't look like punches. "Right," she says. "Just a fist gave you those scrapes."_

_Good Cop shrugs. "They may have been holding something. Brass knuckles, perhaps? I wasn't paying very close attention."_

_Wyldstyle rolls her eyes, because_ who _is so much of a ditz that they can't even pay attention to what someone's hitting them with?_

"Brass knuckles?!" _Emmet exclaims. "You said you were fine!"_

 _Good Cop smiles again and says, "I appreciate the concern, but I_ do _know how to defend myself, Emmet. You don't need to worry about me."_

_"But--but who'd want to do something like this to you?" Emmet asks._

_Wyldstyle opens her mouth to sarcastically list the reasons, but Good Cop speaks first._

_"Many people are upset about what they saw last night, Emmet," he says gently. "People are not feeling very charitable towards me or--or Bad Cop."_

_That's understating it. Wyldstyle crosses her arms. "Maybe you deserve it," she says._

_"What--Lucy!" Emmet sputters._

_Good Cop shrugs. "I admit, I've done several less than stellar things. These people are right to feel angry." He looks her straight in the eyes. "But I like to think that I've changed, Wyldstyle. I'm paying my dues, just like anyone else."_

_"Maybe you are," Wyldstyle says. "But what about Bad Cop? For all we know, he's still an evil murdering jerk."_

_Good Cop's smile freezes on his face and he has to visibly take a deep breath. "Wyldstyle," he says, and his voice hits a cold register that Wyldstyle has never heard before. "I'll thank you not to insult Bad Cop like that. Rest assured, he's paid his restitution. Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it hasn't happened." He sighs, then gets up. "Sorry to take so much of your time, but I think I need to go. Have a good day, Emmet. Wyldstyle."_

_He leaves._

_Emmet turns towards her. "Lucy! Why did you say that?"_

_"What? I wasn't wrong," Wyldstyle says. "You saw the broadcast, and that's not even a fraction of what he's done to us, so excuse me if I'm a little skeptical of everything being sunshine and rainbows."_

_"We weren't supposed to see that!" Emmet says. "About him and Business, that was, that was their business, not ours. They're better now!"_

_Wyldstyle huffs. "Yeah, well, them being better doesn't mean they didn't do loads of horrible stuff before," she says._

_Emmet fidgets uncomfortably. "Yeah, but...they made mistakes. And those videos, I know they make them look like really bad guys, but_ we _know they're not like that. Who would put those videos up like that?"_

_Wyldstyle sighs. Emmet is really too idealistic, sometimes. Nobody's seen Business since last night, but everyone knows he made a run for it. She's honestly surprised Good Cop hasn't, too. "Someone who really hates Business and Bad Cop. I don't blame them for doing it. We've got a right to know."_

_"I, I guess..." Emmet says. "I'm just...worried, you know? Good Cop's been attacked already, that shouldn't be happening. He's a really great and cool guy, and people should give him a chance."_

_Wyldstyle gives him a look. She's really not sure when Emmet developed this_ thing _about Good Cop, but she doesn't like it. Good Cop and Bad Cop are nothing but bad news, as far as she's concerned._

_"Maybe," she says._

* * *

That night, Good Cop finds himself standing on the roof of his apartment complex.

He's...not proud of himself. Not at all.

He'd lashed out, hurt those people in that alleyway much more than he should and he'd come very close to hurting Wyldstyle as well, which was...indefensible, not to mention irresponsible. He was supposed to protect and serve the people, from both criminals and himself, not take his anger out on civilians, and _definitely_ not keep going beyond reasonable defensive action.

He'd been (still is) angry, but that's not an excuse when he puts people in the hospital, or if he hadn't reined himself in at the last moment, worse.

His fists tighten around the guard rail, and the cold of the metal bites through his gloves and into his skin. The feeling is sharp and cuts clean through the swirling haze in his mind.

He'd let his anger get the best of him, which was unacceptable. He may let Bad Cop get away with that, but _he_ knows better. It shouldn't have taken Wyldstyle provoking him to remove himself from the situation; he shouldn't have gone out at _all_ with his mood this volatile. He certainly doesn't trust himself in public again for some time.

So here he is, standing at the edge of his roof as brisk wind whips past his shoulders because he still can't find his jacket. 

He can still hear shouting in the distance. The riots haven't subsided, not that he expected them to. He's not sure how long they'll be able to keep it up, because he doesn't think Business will show up at all if he can help it.

Looking over the faint glow of marching protesters, Good Cop thinks that he should feel happy about this. He's just about destroyed Business's good reputation in one fell swoop, and with the documents he'd sent to the police department, they'll be investigating Octan for numerous fishy practices including but not limited to blackmail, extortion, embezzling, and safety regulation noncompliance. If they're half as competent as they were when he and Bad Cop had worked there, they'll find a _lot_ of dirt. So that's Business's ego and money hamstringed.

It won't be surprising if he gets ousted from political office, too, so there's Business's power gone as well. Maybe he could hang on if he had a cavalcade of people in power to cover for him, but as charismatic as he may have been, he wasn't generous unless it served his needs, and he hoarded his power jealously. Almost everyone who worked directly for him was a robot, and it's not like he treated them very well, either.

Good Cop could go further, but all this, it's enough. If Business can regain people's trust in spite of everything, then more power to him. At least this time, he'll deserve the respect he gets.

Good Cop...doesn't think he's happy. He wonders if maybe he's done the wrong thing, exposing Business in revenge like this. Business deserves to have his crimes exposed, he doesn't doubt that for a second, but he's been _angry_ at Business, and sometimes when he's angry it's hard to tell if he really thinks the decisions he makes are the right way about things, especially now that B isn't here to stop him when he goes too far. There were other ways of making Business pay, he knows, ways that didn't involve dropping a bombshell on the world or forcing Business into hiding.

He doesn't think Bad Cop would be happy about this.

 _but what do you know?_ says a traitorous voice in the back of his mind. _you thought he trusted you._

Good Cop sighs and presses the thought from his mind, tries to release the tension that's wrapped around his heart and coiling in his skin. He can't think about it, can't bring himself to consider the reasons.

He tries to take a deep breath, but his lungs just don't seem to want to cooperate.

Bad Cop must have thought it was the right thing to do, he had to have had a reason. It's just...

It doesn't hurt any less.

* * *

Things...happen.

The nightmares don't subside, not for the several days that follow, and Good Cop finds himself restlessly milling around his apartment, trawling for anything, _anything_ to keep his mind off of Bad Cop, of his own failures. He reads through some of his backlog, crochets some absolutely dreadful doilies, and bakes so many rolls that he doesn't know where to store them, much less how he'll eat them all.

He calls his parents once or twice, too, just to let them know he's okay. He doesn't say much else, though, because there's really nothing he wants to say, especially about Bad Cop and what he may or may not have done. Better to let them grieve in peace.

It takes less than three days until Good Cop is so restless that pacing the roof isn't enough to settle himself, and he decides it's been long enough that he can trust himself in public again. If he doesn't get out of the apartment, for at least a little while, he's going to _scream._

He's tense as he steps out onto the street and breathes in, then out. He sincerely promises himself that if anyone confronts him, he'll remove himself before anything bad happens.

The mobs have broken up a little in the past few days, but Bricksburg still hasn't resumed its normal rhythm, either, with mostly closed shops and empty streets. People are wary of him, but for the most part, they don't talk to or shout at or insult him (anyone who does, he ignores, though not as easily as he'd like). They're probably scared of what he--or Bad Cop--might do. They mostly give him a wide berth, and he's okay with that.

He walks for a long time, and as the coiling tension in his skin starts to bleed away, he decides that he's overdue for a few matters. He visits some people.

Shopkeepers, librarians, artists, construction workers, mailmen.

None of them are friends, not really, but sometimes friendly acquaintances are just as good, and he thinks, at the very least, that he owes them explanations.

His acquaintances don't exactly welcome him with open arms, and there's sometimes a little yelling involved, but eventually they're willing to hear him out and let him talk about what he'd done for Business.

"It wasn't right," he tells Chip, the hat maker. "Not when I did it, and not now. Those things you saw on the news, they're real, and they were wrong. And maybe Business ordered all of those things to be done, but I'm still the one who did it."

"An' what about your other half?" Chip asks.

Good Cop shrugs. "Bad Cop regrets. Much more than I do. He didn't want to do a lot of the things that Business had him do, but, well. You saw what happens when Business gets angry. We were scared, a lot of the time."

"Nasty bit o' work, the President," Chip says. "Wouldn't have believed it if I 'adn't seen it myself. Where's he run off to? Holed up in 'is tower?"

"Nobody knows," Good Cop says. "I don't think he'll be able to stay hidden for long. Everyone across the realms must know about him by now."

Chip sighs and puts down his hat. "Listen, I don't like what you did, Cop, not one bit. But y'came around to talk, and I 'ppreciate that, at least. You say you know better now, and I think I gotta believe you. I've seen you around the rebuilding sites, and you helped me get my shop back after the President's flying machines destroyed downtown. I don't know if that's all enough for everything you did, but it's a start. You're a good sort."

Good Cop smiles sadly. "Not as good as people hoped, though," he says.

Chip shrugs. "Well, nobody is. You're doing your best, and that's all you gotta give." He shoos Good Cop with a gesture. "Now get outta here, I've got work to finish. Let me know if people find where the President's run off to."

Good Cop goes.

* * *

Things are okay.

Days pass, and sitting on the roof at night becomes a regular thing. He's still angry--angry at Bad Cop, angry at Business, angry at the world--but talking to people had helped bleed some of it off and it doesn't _burn_ as much anymore. He's never liked being angry, hates how it gnaws at him, like he's eating himself from the inside out, but he can't just let it _go,_ either. Not when he feels revenge in his hands and betrayal in his heart.

It's...exhausting, honestly.

"Good Cop? What are you doing up here?"

Good Cop adjusts the blanket around his shoulders and looks up. It's Benny.

"I couldn't sleep," Good Cop says. "So I thought I'd get some fresh air."

"On the roof?" Benny asks. "Aren't you cold?"

"Well, I have a blanket," Good Cop replies. "And hot cocoa. Would you like to join me? I think there's enough for another couple of cups."

"Oh, wow, thanks!" Benny says as he sits next to Good Cop and sets his helmet aside while Good Cop pours him a cup from his thermos. He blows on the hot cocoa before taking a sip. "This is good," he says.

"It's Pa's recipe," Good Cop says. "Though he prefers his with a shot of Irish cream. He'd make it for me when I had trouble sleeping. Without the alcohol, obviously."

"Oh," Benny says. "That's nice, isn't it? Hot chocolate for the family."

"Everyone except for Ma," Good Cop says. "She can't drink milk. I can't drink too much, either, but it helps for times like this."

He sips his hot cocoa. It's a little richer than he normally makes it; B used to complain about how it tasted too much like butter.

Obviously, that's not a problem anymore.

"So, um," Benny says. "Emmet said you got attacked. Are you okay?"

Emmet _would_ tell people about him getting assaulted. He's the sort to worry about things like that.

"Ah, I'm fine. Still a little bruised, but I'll be better in a few days," Good Cop says. "Thank you for your concern."

"Right," Benny says. "I ran into a group of people a few days ago...they'd just gotten out of the hospital, you know? And they were injured and stuff, so I went to see what had happened and...they said Bad Cop had kicked the heck out of them. They seemed pretty mad about it."

Good Cop sighs, even as guilty heat rises at the back of his neck. "...I wasn't in a good mood that day," he says. "It was self defense, but I went too far. I should have stopped myself."

"Stopped Bad Cop, you mean," Benny says.

Good Cop shrugs. "It's kind of the same thing, sometimes."

Benny makes a noncommittal sound from the back of his throat and takes another drink of hot cocoa.

Good Cop looks at him. "So why are _you_ on the rooftops so late?"

"I dunno," Benny says. "I'm just used to staying up late. I like to look at the stars, but I haven't been in the mood lately, with the...you know."

"Ah." He glances over at Benny, who's chewing on his upper lip and very resolutely staring at the ground. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"What? I mean, I, I guess..." Benny stammers. "I dunno, is there much to say? We still have no idea who put up those videos and everything just seems kinda...bad now. Like, we're friends with Business, and I guess now we know why he never talked to us about the past." He takes another drink of his hot cocoa and shifts uncomfortably. "But at the same time, I think it would've been better if he'd told us? Like that broadcast was...not an ideal way to find out about it, and...I dunno, I thought he trusted us."

Good Cop looks down into his own mug of cocoa and thinks of Bad Cop and gaping holes in his memory.

"I know what you mean," he says. "Are you going to forgive him?"

"What? For not trusting us?" Benny asks. "I mean, we don't really know each other that well, so I guess I just want to hear what he has to say before I...get mad at him or anything."

"But he's missing. What if he never explains himself? What if something happens and he can't?" Good Cop asks.

Benny blinks. "You don't--you don't think something _happened_ to Business, do you? Like, you got attacked--"

"I don't know," Good Cop says. "But say he never comes back and never gives you the answers you want. Would you still forgive him?"

"I...I'm not sure," Benny says. "Like, it feels like he's just been lying to us this whole time and I...don't like that."

Good Cop hums to himself.

"You know, the other day," Benny says, "Emmet told us. About the prophecy and the Special and how it was all fake. And he was really scared, I think, but he decided that that was the right time to tell us, and I appreciated that he'd do that."

"Emmet doesn't think very much of himself. He was scared he'd lose you as friends if he told you."

"Yeah," Benny murmurs. "He, um. He said that he talked to you about it first, and you told him it was better to tell us when he was ready instead of keeping it a secret. So, thanks, I guess.

"But, like, Business, I don't think it was the right time for him yet, and now that everything's happened the way it has, it's never going to be the right time."

"No," Good Cop says, thinking of Bad Cop's last words, thinking of how he died so _easily._ "I suppose not."

"...I don't know," Benny says. "Whoever put those videos up, that was...bad. Business has done a lot of stuff, but he's still a person, and I think he'd have gotten around to telling us when he was ready."

"Maybe," Good Cop says. "But you have to realize, what Business does has an impact on millions of people. He's a person, sure, but he's definitely not _just_ a person. Honestly, I think you Master Builder friends of his are his last concern right now."

Benny is silent for a long time after that. They drink their cocoa long after it's gone cold, and sit there on the roof, watching the moon set.

"I think..." Benny says after some time. "I think I would forgive him. Even if he never came back or explained himself. He must have had his reasons for not telling us, and I don't think he meant to hurt us. Maybe he was--was scared, like Emmet. I...don't want to be mad at someone forever. That's not a good way to live."

Good Cop looks down into his empty mug and sighs. "No. No, it's not."

* * *

_Things are not okay._

_Things are so, so,_ so _not okay._

_It is the middle of the night, and Business hiding from his own city._

_This wasn't--wasn't supposed to happen! He never meant for those videos to be seen, and maybe he should have deleted them at some point, but he'd put a lot of_ work _into them and they were secure in his most secure servers in Octan. Nobody should have known they were there, much less_ put it out _for everyone to see._

_He ran after the broadcast started, before any of the Master Builders could grab him or ask him about it, of course he did, he knew they wouldn't like seeing what he did, which was kind of the point. He thought he'd be able to get back home and everything would be fine, but..._

_He's never been so wrong. Bricksburg has just about ground to a halt, there's an enormous mob--so much bigger than anything he or the Master Builders ever managed--staking out Octan, blocking any of his entrances, and everyone's looking for him. He doesn't know what they'll do to him and he doesn't have his robots or his Lord Business pants or anything to make them stop, and he's--_

_He's scared._

_It's been...fifteen days now, and Business is a complete and utter mess. His suit jacket is missing half a sleeve, he's hungry, and he's aching_ everywhere. _He's bounced between contacts and people who owe him debts, but he can't stay anywhere for very long, because the people who give him asylum won't do so for very long, not with the whole Kragle thing hanging over his head._

("Get out of here, Business," Sal, an old associate from school says. 

"Wh-what?" Business stammers. "B-but I--"

"I'm not keeping a megalomaniac in my house. You've slept the night, now _go."_

"I don't have anywhere _to_ go!"

"That's not my problem.")

_He's running out of places to turn, fast. There's really only one place left before he starts grasping at straws._

_He stares at Bad Cop's apartment door and takes a fortifying breath. He's been...reluctant to come here. Bad Cop's really a drag to be around, and Good Cop's just_ weird _with how happy he is all the time and doesn't want to do things like capture and torture people. Also, Bad Cop's apartment is honestly kind of dingy and small (and not in a great neighborhood, either), and Business had to get around the mob to even get here--he'd almost gotten caught twice!_

_But he can admit it's a safe place to stay, and after everything he's done for Bad Cop over the years, he should be able to at least get something decent to eat._

_So he knocks._

_Then he waits._

_Over a minute passes with no response, and Business starts to get nervous. Bad Cop didn't...move, did he? A little frantically, Business checks to make sure he's got the right apartment number. He's sure the number is right, and it's the same welcome mat that he remembers, so maybe Bad Cop didn't hear him and he can just knock again--_

_There's a click and the door swings open. Bad Cop--no, Good Cop--is there in a loose T-shirt and fleece pajama bottoms. He looks very tired, but he's smiling._

_"Business," Good Cop says, and just like last time, the insubordination makes Business want to protest, because his proper address is_ Lord _Business, or, excepting that,_ sir, _and Good Cop knows it. "Last I heard, you were missing. What brings you here?"_

_Business is vaguely touched that Good Cop cares, because nobody else has, these past few weeks. Despite his misgivings, this might be a good idea (it's his only choice, but that's not the point)._

_"I need--" he pauses, because that sounds a little bit like_ begging, _which is below someone of his caliber, but it's true, isn't it? "I need somewhere to stay," Business says._

_"Oh?" Good Cop asks. He shifts his weight a bit and leans more into the doorway, one hand on either side. "Why is that?"_

_Business gapes. He knows Good Cop is a little dim, but there's no way he's_ this _much of an idiot. With those videos, he should be over the coals, too, he should know what's going on._

_How Bad Cop ever got anything done with Good Cop around, he doesn't know._

_"People are--are looking for me," Business says. "I need somewhere to lay low for a while, that's--that's all."_

_Good Cop sighs and says, "Business,"--and there it is again, that insubordination--"you don't really think you can just wait this out, do you?"_

_Business blinks. "What?"_

_"The people out there are angry at you. They're not angry because you...stole a pastry from the break room, they're angry because you tried to_ destroy the world. _Do you really think that you can run away and things will solve themselves?"_

_Business purses his lips. He didn't come here for a game of twenty questions in a hallway. "Look, just let me in already--"_

_"It's not going to help," Good Cop says. "Everyone thinks you're guilty, you know. You can try to explain yourself, can't you? Explain yourself, go home, none of this hiding. I know you can't want to be here that badly."_

_"Explain--Good Cop, I_ did _all those things! You know that, you were_ there! _I can't just go out there and say, 'hey, I did a bunch of evil stuff and that was rad', that's not how that works!" He takes a few deep breaths. "I'm a good guy, I shouldn't have to deal with this."_

("I've made my choice!" he yells, back in the heart of his TAKOS. "Nobody ever thought I was special, well look at me now! I'm going to destroy the world, and everything will be _perfect._ There's nothing you can do to stop me, _Special,_ and if that makes me a bad guy, then that's just how it's got to be!"

"But," Emmet says, frozen to the ground and helpless, with the Piece of Resistance in his hands, "that's not true. Nobody has to be bad, and it's never too late to change. You _are_ special, and unique, and smart, I mean, just look at what you've been able to do. And...you can do a lot more. It's never too late to be a good guy and do cool things and make friends."

There's something about that, that makes Business pause. It isn't too late to turn back, people will like him, he can have friends...

Emmet smiles then. "And maybe you don't think anyone cares, but you know what? I do.")

_Good Cop huffs. "Then apologize, Business. If you've wronged people and you recognize that it's wrong, if you really are a 'good guy', go out there and apologize. Face the music. Make things better."_

_Business makes a face, because why is Good Cop making such a big deal out of this? Everything will cool down--and it will, it always will if he can wait long enough, and he can pick things up where they left off. Be a good guy, do cool things, have people like him. Go on with--_

_"What are you scared of?" Good Cop asks._

_Scared?_ Scared? _Business isn't scared, that's not true, that's not how he rolls. They're just civilians, and they're loud and angry and have torches and pitchforks and elephants, but that's nothing, he's got his robots and Micromanagers--_

_\--except he doesn't, Octan's blocked off for blocks around, and there's no way for him to mobilize against the entirety of Bricksburg, much less them and the Master Builders at the same time. And here he is, at Bad Cop's door, arguing so he can be let in and have something to eat. Pathetic. Desperate._

_"It doesn't matter if I apologize," Business settles for saying. "People are still going to be angry at me, no matter what."_

_Something in Good Cop's gaze sharpens at that, and it pins Business where he stands. "Maybe..." he says, slowly, dragging the sound out. "Maybe this isn't about you, Business. Maybe this isn't about what people think of you or what you can gain. Those people are right to be angry, and I'm not asking you to apologize because I think it'll make you feel better--I'm asking you to do it because it's the right thing to do."_

_Business's mouth twists. How trite._ The right thing to do _was what made Good Cop so soft, and he, great Lord Business, wasn't like that._

 _"Why are you being so_ difficult, _Good Cop?" Business snaps. "I'm asking for help, you like helping people, don't you?"_

 _Good Cop shifts his weight, leaning on one side of the door frame._ He's blocking the doorway, _Business realizes._

 _"I'm trying to help you, Business, but you're not letting me. You're not_ listening _to me. You can't hide from this," Good Cop says. "I don't know what kind of solipsistic world you exist in, but those are real people out there with thoughts and feelings and families and friends who you tried to_ murder. _They don't exist to make you feel better about yourself."_

 _"I don't know what flowers and sunshine world_ you _come from that you think it's going to be so_ easy." _Business retorts. "Do you really think they're going to let me say my part and that's the end of it?"_

 _"I think you'll find that they are very eager to hear what you have to say, and of course it won't be easy. Forgiveness_ isn't _easy," Good Cop replies flatly. "Do you even care what you've done to them? Or do you just care that they don't like you anymore?"_

_Business doesn't dignify that with a response. "I've had enough of your cheek, Good Cop. After everything I've done for you, you should be happy to help me!"_

_There's a long pause as Good Cop scrutinizes Business, pausing on the visible scrapes on his face and the tears in his clothes._

_"Everything you've done for me?" Good Cop asks softly. "Yes, I suppose you've done a lot. You gave us a job, gave us hard work for seven years, capturing and torturing Master Builders..."_

_"Yes, exactly," Business says._

_"You've forced us to cause untold amounts of damage and displace hundreds of people," Good Cop continues. "You had us execute your dissidents, tore us apart for daring to protest your methods, overworked us constantly with no privacy and little time to ourselves."_

_"What--"_

_"Bad Cop was happy, you know. Before we started working for you. He smiled a lot, told terrible jokes. He never killed anyone, especially not innocents. You took that away from him, left him tired and hating himself for_ years." _Good Cop sighs. "So yes, you've done a lot, Business. You've changed us, and we have blood on our hands, just like you do. But I've tried to be better and to fix the damage while you've been floating around with your new friends, having burgers and going to parties. You say you've changed, you say you're a 'good guy', but are you really?"_

 _Heat rises into Business's face. He isn't going to stand for this kind of insubordination--not from_ Good Cop. _"Where's Bad Cop?" he demands. "I command him to show himself! You can't insult me like this!"_

_"We don't work for you anymore, Business," and Good Cop doesn't look intimidated in the least, doesn't even shift his position blocking his apartment doorway. "And do you really think Bad Cop can show himself after what you did to him with your Scepter? Was that apology check-up last time just to soothe the minor blip in your conscience?"_

"Where is Bad Cop?" _Business grinds out. If he'd known Good Cop was going to be this much of a pain, he have gotten rid of him years ago--_

_"Bad Cop's not here," Good Cop says. He's not smiling anymore. "You murdered him, Business."_

_Business's bravado leaves him in a near-audible whoosh as his mind skips a second, rewinds, plays that back. "Wh-What? That's impossible."_

_It can't be true. He'd known that there was the_ possibility _that the Scepter was lethal, of course, he'd had it in reserve to take care of Good Cop for over a year, except he'd gotten angry at Bad Cop for defying him and..._

 _Nothing he'd used before, no matter how he tried, was permanent. There's just...no way Bad Cop is_ gone. _Bad Cop, his best and most loyal minion, dead?_

_"Reforming--if you can even call it that--doesn't magically make all the bad things you did go away. You and everyone else get to reap the consequences," Good Cop says._

_Business scrambles for words to defend himself, but they all seem to slip away at once._

_Good Cop shifts, takes a step backwards. "Bad Cop gave you everything, you know," he says. "He followed you and did those terrible things even when he didn't agree because he thought you had a vision worth fighting for. You repaid his service by killing him, and forgive me for thinking so, but that's not what a 'good guy' does."_

_For some reason, the hallway is spinning and Business feels somewhat lightheaded. This isn't how this was supposed to go, Bad Cop was going to save him, he was his most loyal--_

_But he's, he--_

_"We're people, not tools to use and dispose of, Business. I think you've taken enough from us," Good Cop says. "And no, I_ don't _forgive you. Not when you don't even understand what you did. Not to us, not to the Master Builders, not to everyone in Bricksburg."_

_"B-but you can't--" Business stammers._

_"Leave," Good Cop says, and there's a hard edge in his voice that Business has never heard before. "Or I'll call your Master Builder friends and tell them you're here and you can answer to them."_

_Good Cop closes the door in his face, and Business can hear the deadbolt click. Business stands there, staring at the door._

_He's..._

_He's got nowhere to run anymore._

* * *

Good Cop doesn't sleep better that night.

He doesn't sleep worse, either.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> People start to realize that something might be going on with Good Cop.

Good Cop wakes up some time around eleven to a sharp rattling noise from one of his windows. Blearily, he puts his glasses on, stumbles out of bed, and makes his way over to see what's going on.

He's not sure what he expects, but it _definitely_ isn't Benny and Batman hovering right outside his living room window. Batman is holding something that looks suspiciously like a brick from the apartment building outer wall.

Suddenly feeling very awake, Good Cop unlatches the window and throws it open. "First off," he says, "are you trying to _break in_ to my apartment? Second off, how did you even find my address?"

"Oh, uh," Benny says, making some gestures for Batman to put the brick back. "We were looking for you all morning, and, um, I figured you probably lived in this building, because you were sitting on the roof with a blanket and everything and--"

"Benny, Emmet has my phone number. You could have just called," Good Cop says.

"...Oh," Benny says, blush rising in his cheeks.

"Right, okay, whatever," Batman cuts in gruffly. "We're here, can we come in?"

"No, you're not coming in through the window. I have a _door,"_ Good Cop says. "Go around and _use_ it, please. Number 39."

Batman frowns. "What? But we're already here, that's dumb and--"

"Right!" Benny says, clapping a hand over Batman's mouth. "Sounds reasonable! We'll go around. Just give us a couple of minutes."

With that, they descend out of sight on Batman's grappling gun. Good Cop pinches the bridge of his nose. _Breaking in._ Sometimes he can't even believe the Master Builders' lack of respect.

He heads to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. He needs it.

Batman and Benny knock on the door, and Good Cop (however grudgingly) lets them in.

"Wow," Benny says as he comes in and takes a look around. "This place is...homey."

By which he probably means it looks like it's owned by an old lonely grandmother, if the way he's eyeing the extensive hanging yarn stash and Ma's framed embroidery is any indication.

"It's small," Batman says. "Could use some improvement, if you ask me. You'd think Business's right-hand man would have more expensive taste."

"I am standing _right here,"_ Good Cop says. "And I can't believe I have to say this, but for future reference, you do _not_ have permission to break into my apartment. Knock or call ahead, thank you kindly."

"We were going to put the wall back after we took it out," Batman says.

"That...doesn't make it better. Maybe you Master Builders don't realize this, but most people prefer that their walls stay put," Good Cop says. He shakes his head and says, "Why were you looking for me?"

"We found Business last night," Batman replies.

Good Cop blinks. He was pretty sure Business was missing--

 _Last night._

Something clicks back into place in Good Cop's mind, because between being phenomenally tired and getting woken up by a _break-in,_ he'd almost forgotten Business had come around just something hours ago, demanding asylum.

Business, who, despite his declarations of being 'better', had clearly learned nothing since giving up his world destruction plans.

Good Cop frowns. Thinking of Business puts a bitter taste in his mouth. "I see," he says. "How did that happen?"

"We had to break up a fight," Benny says. "Some people found Business a few blocks from here sometime around...four in the morning. It, um, wasn't good."

 _"I_ broke up the fight," Batman says. "Swooped in like the night and got him out. Basically saved his life."

Benny nods. "Right, Batman broke up the fight and got Business somewhere safe. He's not too hurt, but he definitely doesn't look super good."

Good Cop glances from Benny to Batman. If they want to protect Business, that's their choice, but... "Why did you come tell me?" he asks.

Benny blinks, clearly not expecting that question. "Well, you worked for him, didn't you? We thought that you would, well, want to know, and--"

"Business won't talk to us," Batman says. "And we know he was here sometime last night. So what happened?"

Good Cop sighs. This really isn't a conversation he wants to have before he's had his morning coffee, but he doesn't have a choice, does he? He takes a seat by the breakfast bar and gestures for Batman and Benny to do the same. "Business visited me last night," Good Cop says. "He was looking for somewhere to stay, and we had a talk."

"What did you say?" Batman growls.

"I told him he needs to stop running away," Good Cop says flatly.

"What else?" 

Good Cop drums his fingers on the breakfast bar impatiently. "There's nothing else," he says. "That's all I said."

Batman's eyes narrow and he jabs an accusing finger into Good Cop's chest. Benny starts from his seat.

"--Batman--"

"Business was looking for a place to stay, but you threw him out. He's locked himself in his room and won't see _anyone._ He was maybe crying when we started looking for you, _what did you say?"_ Batman demands.

Calmly, Good Cop takes Batman's hand and moves it away. "Business knows why he can't stay here," he says. "And if you want to know about it, you should ask him, not me."

Batman snatches his hand out of Good Cop's. "Do you think it's funny to kick people when they're down? This isn't a joke, Bad Cop."

Good Cop takes a deep breath. Batman is angry, of course he is. Bad Cop had detained many of his friends, and by Taco Tuesday, not all of them had gotten out whole, or at all.

"I'm sorry if I've wronged you in the past, Batman," he says. "But maybe before you make me out as the villain in this situation, you should talk to Business and actually find out what's going on instead of coming over unsolicited and _breaking in_ to my apartment. Do you even know what Business wants?"

"He wants forgiveness," Benny says before Batman can speak.

"No," Good Cop says, turning towards him. "Business doesn't want forgiveness, because he doesn't even know what forgiveness means."

Benny frowns. "If you don't think he wants forgiveness, then...what do you think he wants?"

 _"Ask_ him," Good Cop says. "And maybe then, you'll understand."

* * *

Unsurprisingly, by the time Good Cop decides to buy groceries that afternoon, the news of Business's reappearance has already made the rounds.

In a practical sense, it doesn't mean much, because Business still hasn't _shown_ himself or made a statement, but it does mean that he's still alive and in Bricksburg.

It also means a lot of people have stopped to ask him if he knows what's going on, which, okay. It's reasonable to assume he has some idea of Business's status, but after the twentieth time, he just wants to buy apples without having to stop and say, yes, Business is in custody, no, he doesn't know any details.

So when he's finally on his way back to his apartment and he hears someone say, "Hey, Good Cop!" naturally his first reaction is to say, "No, I don't know where Business is being held."

"Oh, that's...not what I was going to ask, but thanks for letting me know!" Emmet says.

Good Cop looks up, and yes, it's Emmet and Lucy, no, _Wyldstyle_ in casual clothes. "Ah, hello, Emmet," Good Cop says. "Sorry, I didn't realize it was you."

"Hey, no problem!" Emmet says with a laugh. "Oh, right, last time, I wanted--" He digs into a bag he's got slung over his shoulder and pulls out an olive green jacket. He holds it out to Good Cop. "I forgot to give this back."

Good Cop takes the jacket, and yes, it's the green bomber jacket that he's been missing for the last two weeks. "Where did you--"

"You gave it to me in Cloud Cuckooland, remember?" Emmet says. "At the party."

No, Good Cop doesn't remember that at all. The only things he really remembers about that party are the fireworks, getting punched in the face, and the broadcast. He vaguely recalls painting Emmet's face at some point, but after the fallout of his broadcast, everything else was kind of inconsequential.

"Ah, of course. Thank you for returning it," Good Cop says as he drapes the jacket over his arm. "I was on my way home, but if you'd like to talk..."

"Actually," Wyldstyle says with a thin smile, "I want to have a word. In private?"

Good Cop hesitates before responding, because Wyldstyle looks like she wants to _punch_ him, not talk. And while he can definitely handle it if she _does_ punch him, he'd really rather not. But if she really did just want to hit him, she could do so without pulling him to a private area, so he says, "Sure," and lets her lead him away.

"Before you start yelling at me," Good Cop says when they stop in a small alleyway, "I'd like to remind you that, whatever your grievances are, I'm perfectly willing to listen and there's no need for--."

"What do you want with Emmet?" she asks.

Good Cop pauses. Blinks. "I...what?"

Wyldstyle steps towards him threateningly. "What. Do you want. With Emmet?"

Good Cop has barely interacted with Emmet beyond talking during reconstruction work, and since _that_ has been on hold for the last couple of weeks, he's not sure what Wyldstyle can be referring to. "Nothing?" he replies.

"Really?" Wyldstyle asks. "Because, FYI, Emmet is _taken._ By me. And I don't appreciate you trying to steal my boyfriend."

Good Cop needs a second to parse that sentence because _what?_ "I...think there's been a misunderstanding," he says.

Wyldstyle crosses her arms. "He talks a lot about you, _Good Cop._ And I don't know what you think you're doing, cozying up to him and giving him your jacket and talking to him all the time when we're not around, but--"

 _"Wyldstyle,"_ Good Cop cuts in. "Wyldstyle, I am not trying to _seduce_ Emmet. I don't know how you got that impression--"

"Don't try to defend yourself!" Wyldstyle shouts. "He talks to you more than he talks to us! He's always telling us about how he worked with you at the reconstruction site and 'Good Cop said this' or 'Good Cop's so nice'. Do you even see how worried he is about you all the time?" 

Good Cop takes a deep breath. This is...not what he thought he'd be doing today. Or ever.

"Emmet," he says slowly, "doesn't talk to you and your friends as much because he's insecure about not being a Master Builder. He, for whatever reason, doesn't feel like he fits in."

 _"What?"_ Wyldstyle asks. "Are you saying we're bad friends?"

"I'm saying he feels left out. Whether that's your fault or not, I don't know," Good Cop says. "Have you maybe considered asking _Emmet_ about this? Because if you show that you're accepting and willing to listen, he will be happy to tell you how he's feeling."

Wyldstyle bristles. "And what do _you_ know?"

Good Cop sighs. "Wyldstyle, Emmet is not a difficult person to understand. If you can't believe that I'm _not_ trying to seduce your boyfriend, you can at least rest assured that _he_ will not cheat on you. Talk to him about your insecurities and he'll talk to you about his."

Wyldstyle sputters. "In- _Insecurities?"_

"Wyldstyle, you just pulled me aside on some vague suspicion that I was trying to 'steal your boyfriend' because I _talked_ to him. If that isn't an insecurity--"

Wyldstyle punches him in the face.

* * *

"I'm sorry."

"You are not, but I appreciate you saying so," Good Cop says as he adjusts the bag of frozen peas on his cheek and wonders if his face just looks especially punchable these days.

There's an awkward pause that's filled with the sound of boiling water and Wyldstyle gets up to go help Emmet in the kitchen.

In a chain of events that still don't entirely make sense to Good Cop, he has been invited to dinner at Emmet's. He tried to refuse, of course; he'd just been accused of trying to 'steal' Emmet, and getting invited to dinner could only exacerbate that, not to mention how Wyldstyle _had_ just punched him in the face. But then there was something about apologies and making sure he gets home okay and, more importantly, some developments about Business.

Good Cop is nothing if not eager to learn about his enemies' predicaments.

So here he is.

Emmet's apartment is very average for someone living alone who doesn't mind living cheaply. The two-seater sofa is well-worn, there are letters littered around the coffee table amidst advertisements with coupons cut out and a forgotten paper coffee cup, and a few large potted plants around the living room, one of which may be plastic. There are some crooked hanging picture frames of Emmet and his Master Builder friends, but no other photos of friends or family.

It's obvious that Emmet doesn't frequently entertain guests. The dining table only has one matching chair, with a few folding chairs stacked against the wall, and he appears to only have a few plates and maybe one and a half full sets of metal silverware.

Good Cop doesn't comment on it. It's not as if Emmet knew he would have guests for dinner.

"Hey," Emmet says as he comes out of the kitchen. He's wearing an apron, which is odd because they're just cooking spaghetti bolognese--not particularly messy, last time Good Cop checked. "Are you all right? That, uh, it kind of looks like it hurts."

Good Cop smiles, and it stings a bit when it pulls his cheek. He hadn't told Emmet that Wyldstyle had punched him; Emmet seemed to be under the impression that he'd somehow gotten mugged in the five minutes he and Wyldstyle were out of sight. "Don't worry about it, Emmet. It's not as bad as it looks. Is everything okay in the kitchen? Do you need any help?"

"No, everything's great!" Emmet says. "We're pretty much done. I just wanted to see how you were doing while Lucy finishes the noodles. Did you know? She's never really cooked before, so she's super excited to help out with it." He rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. "I'm, uh, not great at it either, but we've got these great cook books and it's fun to cook together."

"Ah, that's nice," Good Cop replies.

"Emmet! Help me bring the food out!" Wyldstyle shouts from the kitchen.

Dinner and plastic plates and utensils are brought out. There isn't enough space around Emmet's small dining table, so they sit on the floor around the coffee table instead. Good Cop finds the whole thing overly casual, but he supposes that Emmet and Wyldstyle aren't the formal sort.

"So," Wyldstyle says after maybe a full minute of silent eating. "I got a call from Batman, and Business still won't come out of his room except to eat. He's not saying a lot, which is sort of...alarming."

"But he _is_ talking?" Good Cop asks.

"Yeah, kind of," Wyldstyle says with a shrug. "He's mostly been asking people if he's a bad person, and they're not sure how to respond to that, because _yeah,_ he tried to destroy the world and get rid of all of us, but he's also really pathetic right now. It sounds like he's constantly on the verge of bursting into tears."

 _"Lucy!"_ Emmet says. "Don't say that!"

"What? It's true," Wyldstyle says. "It's just...weird. We're all mad at Business because of all the hunting and torture and stuff, aren't we? But now he's a mess and being mad at him feels like kicking a puppy." She sighs and has another mouthful of noodles. "He wanted to talk to you," she says to Good Cop.

"Did he?" Good Cop asks. "He wasn't very happy talking to me last night."

"Well, maybe if you'd just tell us what you _said,_ we could get him to stop moaning 'Bad Cop, where are you' and maybe get him out of his room," Wyldstyle says testily.

Good Cop puts his fork down and looks Wyldstyle in the eyes. "Business knows he can't talk to Bad Cop."

Wyldstyle makes a face. "What's so important that Business can't talk to Bad Cop? Are you really so petty that you're just going to give him the cold shoulder?"

_("Oh, come on, Good Cop. There's no need to be petty about this. Don't give me the cold shoulder," Business croons from the top of his very tall shoes._

_Good Cop shifts in the back of his mind, silent. He hurts, no matter how far he pulls back; Business's electrodes had cut deeper than he'd thought possible and--_

_G?_

_Bad Cop's voice is urgent and faint, alarmingly so._

sorry, _Good Cop says, but he doesn't think Bad Cop hears him. Something...snapped, he thinks. Maybe he's too far, or maybe the connection's lost._

_G, Ciar--hear me--okay.--won't let--rid of--_

_Bad Cop says something else, but it's too far away.)_

Good Cop's jaw clenches and he takes a deep breath, as evenly as possible.

Business had never liked Good Cop, and had tried to get rid of him a couple of times in the middle few years, before Bad Cop started taking control almost exclusively. The last...incident had been almost four years ago, but he doesn't like to be reminded of it.

"This is not _pettiness._ It is a matter between Business and me," Good Cop says slowly, to not betray the tremor in his voice. "One that doesn't concern you."

Emmet glances at them. "Uh, guys...?"

"I don't get it," Wyldstyle says. "Why are _you_ so mad at him? You're not a Master Builder. You've done things to us that are just as bad."

Good Cop clenches his fists in his lap. "Master Builders," he says, "are not the only people who exist, Wyldstyle. Business's actions have affected _many_ people, not just those in your insular social circles. I realize that I'm guilty as well, but that doesn't mean I can't recognize that what he and I did was _wrong."_

"Do you have some kind of _problem_ with Master Builders? Like what's up with you? Are you mad you lost or something?" Wyldstyle shoots back.

"Wow, guys--" Emmet says.

"My _problem_ with Master Builders is that they seem to believe normal people are _beneath_ them," Good Cop says.

"We _saved the world--"_

"And left us to deal with the aftermath. I know," Good Cop cuts in. "While you were celebrating, I was moving displaced families and re-establishing destroyed businesses. I understand that Master Builders are very capable, but where have they been? It's been over two months, and besides Benny on and off for the first month or so, I haven't seen any."

Wyldstyle jabs her fork at Good Cop. "What? You think that us bringing down the walls and stopping Business wasn't _enough?"_

"Do you think it was?" Good Cop asks. "Yes, the walls are down and you're free to build where you like, but people who aren't Master Builders don't _care_ about that. They care that someone keeps pulling out the streets or destroying their alleyways and shop fronts because you Master Builders have no sense of _propriety._ Despite what you seem to think, the world is not your playground."

_"Guys--"_

"We gave those people _freedom!_ We're making them happy, just like it used to be," Wyldstyle retorts.

"Have you asked _anyone_ about how they feel about the changes? Because I have, and they are _not_ happy. Many people think you Master Builders are terrorists and vandals, and only some of them have revised their opinion since the broadcast went out," Good Cop says. "If you Master Builders continue doing as you please, you'll have to deal with the public, and in case you need reminding, they vastly outnumber you."

"We're Master Builders! People will see that we're right about this," Wyldstyle says. "It's not like they can just get rid of us."

Good Cop looks at her. "Business said the same thing."

That silences Wyldstyle. She purses her lips and crosses her arms with a huff.

"...Okay," Emmet says. "Are you...are you guys done? Because I just wanted a nice dinner with friends. You guys don't have to fight."

Good Cop clasps his hands under the table and faces Emmet. "I'm sorry. That got out of hand," he says. "But regardless, I won't disclose what I said to Business last night, and Bad Cop won't speak to him, no matter what he or any of you say."

"...Sorry, Emmet. Shouldn't have yelled," Wyldstyle says. "And I still think that you should talk to Business, but if you're going to be selfish about it, clearly there's nothing I can do."

"All right, then. Everyone's friends?" Emmet says, looking between the two of them. "Okay! So, there's this new sandwich place that opened up by the park, and I heard it's really good. Have you heard anything about it?"

Good Cop nods and lets Emmet steer the conversation to less volatile subjects. The rest of dinner goes considerably better.

* * *

_"I, uh, don't think I'm the right person to do this," Emmet says as he enters Wayne Manor sometime before noon. It's way huge, with lots of hanging things and carpets and...rich stuff. It's also really empty and clean, like the floors are shiny and new-looking, and basically, Emmet feels super out of place._

_"He won't talk to any of us," Benny says as he leads Emmet up the stairs. "He doesn't want to talk to anyone but Bad Cop."_

_"But Good Cop won't let him," Emmet says. Good Cop had made that pretty clear at dinner last night._

_Benny makes an affirmative noise. "Yeah, I heard. Good Cop says he's got his reasons, and I don't think he'll change his mind. You talked to Business last time, so maybe you'll have better luck."_

_"But I don't know what to say," Emmet says._

_"Yeah, well, neither do any of us, so we're all on the same page," Benny replies with a grimace as he stops in front of one of the bedrooms. "Just give it a shot."_

_Emmet looks at the door. It's big and fancy, just like everything else, with metal studs and dark wood. There's a paper sign taped on it that has 'Business's Room' written in black marker. "I...okay," he says. He takes a deep breath and knocks._

_"I'm not hungry," Emmet hears Business say. With the door muffling the voice, he can't really make out how Business sounds._

_"I, uh, didn't bring food," Emmet says. "It's Emmet? I wanted to, um, see how you're doing."_

_"I don't want to talk, Emmet."_

_Emmet bites his lip. "Yeah, I heard. But we're worried about you, Business. And we want to help, but like, we don't know what's wrong, so..." He sighs. "Can I come in?"_

_There's a long pause, and then, "Okay."_

_Emmet shoots Benny a panicked look, and Benny gives him a thumbs up. "You'll do fine," Benny says._

_"Right, okay," Emmet says. "I can do this. I've got this."_

_He opens the door, and..._

_Business doesn't look good. He hasn't shaved, and he's got a lot of bruises and bandages and a black eye, and his eyes look red and puffy and, well, like he's been crying. He's wearing a set of bat-patterned pajamas, and it's kind of funny how much it clashes, except no, it's not funny at all._

_"So?" Business asks. "What do you want,_ Special?"

_Emmet winces. With all of the commotion of the last couple of weeks, he forgot that he hadn't been able to tell Business he wasn't the Special._

_He pulls up a chair, because Business is sitting on the bed and this seems like a conversation that he should do sitting down. He clasps and unclasps his hands a couple of times. He's never had a conversation like this, and he_ really _doesn't want to mess up._

_"I don't think you're a bad person," Emmet says. "I think you did a lot of really bad things, but that doesn't mean you're a bad person. You chose to be a good person, remember?"_

_Business grumbles something unintelligible._

_"Um," Emmet says. He glances out to the doorway, but Benny has either left or is standing out of sight. "I know a lot of people are mad at you because you hurt them, and uh, all of that melting chamber and machines and Kragle stuff, that was...not super cool. But you're not doing that anymore, right?"_

_Business shakes his head._

_"Okay! That's good! That's a good start," Emmet says. "And you said sorry for the bad stuff you did?"_

_Business shakes his head again._

_Emmet pauses. "...Oh. You should, um. Do that, then. Otherwise people are gonna think you don't care, right?"_

_"--still mad at me," Business mumbles._

_"Uh, yeah, maybe," Emmet says. "But at least they'll know you're trying, and eventually they won't be mad. Probably. It kind of depends. But you should still do it."_

_Business makes another grumbling sound and looks away._

_"So you'll...you'll say sorry?" Emmet asks._

_Business ignores him._

_Emmet glances at his hands, then back up to Business. He's probably not going to get anything else at this point. "Okay, good talk," he says. "I'm going to go, then. I'll come back soon, okay? We...we care, you know?"_

_Business doesn't respond, and Emmet goes._

* * *

Good Cop wakes at an ungodly hour with a splitting headache and dry eyes and he sits on the edge of his bed, rubbing his temples like that'll really make him feel better.

These past few days have not been enjoyable. Between Business showing up at his door and the Master Builders trying to give him the third degree on _his own affairs,_ he direly wants this whole matter to be over. Maybe he should feel some catharsis--that's the point of revenge, isn't it?--but in reality he feels supremely _hollow._

It's been eighteen days since the broadcast went out, and all he has to show for it is nightmares and an echo of Bad Cop's last words.

This...has to stop.

Good Cop groggily stumbles his way to the bathroom to wash his face. It doesn't really help, but at least the cold water feels _real,_ and that's as much as he can hope for.

He stands there for a while, leaning over the sink in the dark, listening to the faucet drip and taking slow measured breaths to keep himself steady.

He looks in the mirror and sees Bad Cop from those last few days, staring back at him. His skin looks too tight, and there are deep shadows under his eyes, drawn deeper in the moonlight filtering through the frosted glass window.

He looks so _tired._

"'I'm sorry'," Good Cop murmurs. His voice is raspy from sleep, but it's not quite as deep as Bad Cop's had been. "That's how it always was with you, wasn't it? There are so many things you didn't want to do, so many things you did wrong, and--"

Good Cop closes his eyes and his grip tightens on the edges of his sink.

"...you didn't have to, you know. Not pulling the trigger on Ma and Pa, I get that, but everything else, trying to keep me safe, always taking the fall for me, you didn't need to do that. I can fight for myself--fight for _you,_ but you...you never let me make that decision, B."

He sighs and looks up into deep black eyes of a dead man.

"What were you scared of? You could have told me. I would've listened, you know. And maybe it wouldn't have been easy, it's never easy, but...we would have gotten through it together. Like it should have been.

"I...I think I want to forgive you. For--for leaving, or for not letting me be there when you needed it, or for not explaining _anything._ I don't think what you did was right, but I--I don't want to be angry anymore.

"I've made my own choices, and I don't think they were all good, either. Kragling Ma and Pa, helping those Master Builders, exposing Business...they're the best options I had. I know you don't approve, but...you're not here anymore."

He swallows, and his mouth is dry.

"So stop _haunting_ me, B. This...this isn't what you want. You don't want me to be angry or to get revenge, especially not _for_ you. You'd want me to move on, be happy even though you're not here, and I guess you think I'm a better person than I am, because I don't know if I _can._ Believe me, B, I want that too. I want it _so much,_ but..."

His breath hitches, and he squeezes his eyes shut.

"I miss you, B. I miss you so _much."_

* * *

Good Cop gets an unexpected package in the mail sometime around midday. It's a reasonably large box, a bit smaller than a carry-on suitcase, and it's got FRAGILE and PERISHABLE labels on it.

He checks the sender address and it's...from Ma.

He unpacks the box carefully and finds that it's one of Ma's miniature trees. He blinks, because this must be some kind of mistake, except the tree has been very carefully wired to a wooden box frame to keep it from getting crushed, and--

He looks closely at the deep red pinnate leaves and the slate grey patterned tray and realizes with a start that it's Ma's _rowan_ tree, the one she'd grown from a sprig of the rowan tree out front.

(He and B loved that tree. They'd broken some bones climbing and falling out of it multiple times when they were younger, and it was B's fault only some of the time. It didn't stop them from climbing it, though.)

She's been cultivating this tree for longer than he's been alive, there's no _way_ \--

He dials Ma.

_"Hello?"_

"Ma, I think there's been a mistake. I just got your rowan tree in the mail."

_"Oh, did it get there already? I thought it might take another day or two."_

Good Cop blinks. "What?"

 _"Well, I wanted you to get it on your birthday, dear,"_ Ma says.

"Ma," Good Cop says. "I don't think you heard me. You sent me your _rowan_ tree. You know, the really old one that I was never allowed to touch?"

Ma sighs. _"Yes, I meant to send my rowan tree."_

"B-but why?" Good Cop asks. "I thought it was your favorite one. You didn't need to..."

_"Ciaran, as much as I love that tree, I think you need it more than I do."_

"Ma..."

 _"I think...he would like it. He was so upset when he wasn't allowed to play with it, but you remember how he always watched me prune it, don't you?"_ Ma says. _"And this way, he can protect you even though he's gone."_

And, well...

_(There's two of us, we can't have the same name. You can be Ciaran, I can be something else._

do you want to ask ma? she can give you a new name if you want.

_I want to pick one myself._

...you can do that?

_I don't care, I'm doing it. Remember when Pa said the tree out front was magic? He said it stops witches and evil spirits and keeps us all safe, and...I kinda like that._

rowan?

_Yeah. Rowan. I think that's a good name.)_

...he can't argue with that.

"You didn't have to," Good Cop says instead.

Ma laughs. _"We don't_ have _to do anything, dear. That's what makes us human. Maybe I'll regret giving that tree to you, but I don't think so. It'll be good for you."_

"...Thanks, Ma."

_"Take good care of it, okay? I know it's been a long time since you've worked with my trees, but you don't just forget that sort of thing. And take care of yourself, too. You know how we worry."_

"Yes, Ma. I will, Ma."

Ma hangs up, and Good Cop carefully takes the rowan tree out of the shipping frame. It's a delicate thing, less than a foot high, with a broad canopy of red leaves and a twisted trunk set in a round, speckled tray.

He puts the tree outside on the little balcony off of his bedroom.

It's the best view of the city from their apartment, and Good Cop thinks B would like it that way.

* * *

When Good Cop's forty-first birthday comes around two days later, he finds himself at a loss of what to do.

He and Bad Cop had never been ones for large celebrations, even before Business had made leisure all but an impossibility. Usually, they'd buy a slice of cake (an entire cake was too much for them) and maybe get something nice for themselves.

Ma and Pa call, of course. They called every year, even when Bad Cop hadn't been able to answer because of work, and Good Cop gets some satisfaction in picking up the phone this year. They talk for about an hour and a half about how things are going in the countryside, and how reconstruction is (or, at the moment, isn't) going on.

It sounds like they're doing well.

Afterwards, he treats himself to lunch at that new sandwich place Emmet mentioned and it _is_ actually very good. He leaves a generous tip, then takes a walk in the park. He has some quick but pleasant conversations with a few people who are walking their dogs, and takes a moment to see how life in Bricksburg is slowly resuming its normal pace again.

Now that Business is known to be in custody and (presumably) answering to some form of law enforcement, the mobs have mostly broken up. Good Cop isn't sure of the details, but someone from Wayne Industries released a preliminary statement, indicating that Business will, in fact, answer for his crimes. Good Cop very much doubts that Business will do any such thing on his own, but perhaps his Master Builder friends will coerce him into it.

It doesn't really matter. Whatever happens to Business from this point is up to Business. Good Cop will be happy to not have to deal with him again.

By sometime around sunset, when Good Cop leaves a coffee shop in downtown Bricksburg, he comes to the startling realization that he's in a good mood.

He's...not sure how that happened.

He sips his chocolatey coffee and wonders how, in the midst of all of his nightmares and the public unrest and nosy Master Builders, he's actually managed to be _happy._ It feels vaguely wrong, like he's stealing cookies from the cookie jar.

He presses the thought from his mind. He's not about to waste a good mood because he thinks he doesn't deserve it.

So, it's in this train of thought that Good Cop ends up walking by the old Bricksburg observatory and thinks, well, Bad Cop _had_ always wanted to visit, but between police academy and work, they'd never had the chance.

It's too late for Bad Cop now, but Good Cop goes in and thinks he would appreciate it anyways.

The observatory is almost empty, which isn't unexpected. With the expansion of the city, there's been too much air and light pollution to use the telescope properly for years now. Business had thought about demolishing it, and only hadn't because it was inconveniently located and he couldn't think of anything else to put there.

The building shows its age in creaky staircases and a slightly musty scent, but the air coming down the stairs is crisp and fresh, and--

There's already someone there.

It's Benny, and maybe Good Cop shouldn't be surprised, because Benny is nothing if not enthusiastic about space. He's so engrossed with the telescope that he doesn't even hear Good Cop enter the room behind him.

Good Cop softly clears his throat and Benny jumps.

"Sorry! I was just--" Benny turns and blinks. "Good Cop?"

"Didn't mean to startle you," Good Cop says. "Can you see anything interesting?"

"Oh, yeah, definitely!" Benny says. "It's really clear tonight, and you can see Jupiter and its moons right now, which, if you haven't seen it, is pretty cool. I, um, didn't know you liked astronomy."

"It's more Bad Cop's thing than mine," Good Cop says as he takes a seat next to Benny and picks up the observatory's star chart. "We used to have a telescope when we were younger, and Pa would stay up with us to look at the stars. You can see them much better out in the countryside, but then, you already knew that."

"Yeah, light pollution and stuff..." Benny says. "We, I mean the guys from the space station, we've been trying to get this telescope moved to a new observatory a couple realms north for...at least four years. Because this is a really nice observatory and telescope, it's just...the location kinda sucks." He shifts nervously in his seat. "So why are you, um, here?"

Good Cop looks at Benny. He isn't usually this skittish. "I was passing by and thought it would be interesting," Good Cop says. "Is everything okay, Benny? You look...uncomfortable."

Benny grimaces slightly and says, "No, everything's fine."

Well, that was possibly the most unconvincing brush-off Good Cop has ever heard, including anything Bad Cop has ever said. "If it has something to do with me, I promise I won't get angry."

"Right, um," Benny says. He takes a deep breath. "Sorry about, y'know, the whole thing a few days ago? I was the one who, uh, suggested coming to your apartment, and trying to get you to talk to Business, and Wyldstyle told us that you were kind of...not happy after that. So, sorry."

"Well," Good Cop says, "don't do it again, and it should be fine."

"Yeah, we, we won't," Benny says. "Wyldstyle told us what you said about how, uh, people see us, and...we went and talked to some of Emmet's co-workers. We thought you were lying or joking, but, uh. You weren't. People don't, don't really like us."

Good Cop can admit he's pleasantly surprised by that. He hadn't actually expected them to take the initiative.

"Do you at least understand _why?"_ Good Cop asks. "There's no problem with building what you like, but people don't like it when you start pulling out their walls to do it."

"Right, I get it. I mean, I wasn't always a Master Builder, it's just...I've been around them for the last something years, and I guess I kind of forgot that things like that are different," Benny says. "And I'll...try not to do that."

Good Cop leans back in his chair. "That's a good start." He puts the star charts back on the table and says, "Well, I haven't been to an observatory before, and you seem to know what you're doing, so why don't you show me around?"

Benny smiles and says, "Yeah, all right. Come over here and I'll show you how the telescope works."

* * *

It turns out Benny does really know his stuff, and once he gets rolling, he doesn't stop.

"--the problem is, those satellites weren't meant to be refueled, and since the fuel is radioactive, they basically put the stuff in there and sealed it up as tight as it could go. So now we actually _have_ the technology to refuel a satellite, but now there's the problem that if we _want_ to refuel it, we're going to basically have to cut a hole in the side, take out the old radioactive stuff, put in more fuel, then weld it shut again, and that's a little bit of a technical challenge when everything's moving at something like seven thousand miles an hour."

It's endearing, really, the way Benny in his element practically exudes enthusiasm, jumping from topic to topic as it suits him.

 _(--fiberglass_ could _be an alternative. It's light and strong enough, but...it doesn't take shear stress or machining very well, and I'm worried about joint strength. Maybe high carbon steel? The tables say it's stronger overall without the directionality problem, but it's much heavier and that can stress the motors. On the other hand, it'll also lower the center of gravity, and the less those robots trip and fall, the better..._

we have resources, you know. you can just try these things.

 _I know. Just thinking out loud. When we became cops, I didn't think we'd end up reading about material science and_ robotics. _Maybe if law enforcement doesn't pan out, we can work in a machine shop._

maybe you've found your true passion, b.

_No, G. Just, no. Now, I've also looked into aluminum alloys and carbon fiber, and...)_

"--the things you thought were impossible five years ago aren't so impossible anymore, but I guess it's not the worst problem to have--" Benny looks at Good Cop, pauses and says, "Did--did I say something funny?"

Good Cop shakes his head. "No, I was just thinking it's a shame we didn't meet under better circumstances. Bad Cop would have...he would have really liked you." Absently, he checks his watch and sees with a start that it's past eleven. "Ah, sorry to end the conversation like this, but it's late and I should head back. I'd like to talk again sometime, though."

Good Cop gets out of his seat, stretches, then heads down the observatory stairs, feeling lighter on his feet than he has in weeks.

Benny does not.

* * *

_"Hey, Benny? Benny?" Unikitty asks. "Is something wrong?"_

_Benny looks up, and everyone around the table is staring at him. "No, I was just...thinking."_

_"Thinking about what? Another spaceship design?" Wyldstyle asks._

_Benny purses his lips. "No, I, um, ran into Good Cop last night and he said something weird, and I was trying to remember...when's the last time anyone saw Bad Cop?"_

_"You just said you saw him last night," Batman says._

_"No, not...not Good Cop. I mean_ actually _Bad Cop, y'know?" Benny says. "Has anyone seen him at all since Taco Tuesday?"_

_Slow head shakes from all around the table._

_Wyldstyle bites her lip in consideration. "Well, Bad Cop came after Emmet and me when we broke out of the melting chamber, and..." She blinks. "That's it. After that, Good Cop showed up in Old West, then Cloud Cuckooland, but no Bad Cop. Do you think he had some big change of heart then?"_

_Benny drums his fingers on the table nervously. It would be nice if that was all, that Good Cop and Bad Cop just had some kind of fight and that's why Good Cop was out so much, but..._ would have.

_Benny takes a deep breath. "I think...I think something might have happened to Bad Cop."_


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things slow down a little.

The next morning, Good Cop turns on his radio to listen to the news as he makes breakfast and gets to hear Business's official statement.

_"--regards to the actions depicted in the broadcast transmitted at nine o' clock at night on the third of November, I would like to confirm that these accounts are not fabricated, and that I extend my full apologies to those affected by my actions. While the damage cannot be undone, I will do my best to make reparations._

_"I will step down from President of the Whole World, effective next month, and committing funds and personnel to the reconstruction of Bricksburg and other locations damaged by the events of Taco Tuesday. Thank you."_

Good Cop looks over at his radio with a sense of bemusement.

Business actually apologized. Will wonders never cease.

* * *

Reconstruction starts again, and naturally, Good Cop is there and itching to get some work done.

So, it turns out, are Emmet and his Master Builder friends. There's more of them than usual, and Good Cop doesn't recognize the old hippy with the staff or the giant robot pirate, but after some quick greetings, they mostly keep to themselves, taking care of the actual building part of reconstruction.

Good Cop isn't sure why they're suddenly so eager, but that's really none of his business as long as they do help.

And, well, the Master Builders certainly are that--when they're actually working. The building itself is no problem, but getting them to work together and follow the building plans is like herding cats. Good Cop catches a few snippets of arguments between Master Builders and other workers, but Emmet steps up to the thankless task of ironing out relations there with surprising efficacy. Soon enough, building is underway.

Mostly, Good Cop tries to keep to his own work and ignore the bricks flying overhead, because it really is more than a little terrifying being in the midst of Master Builders at work, no matter how inured he is. It feels like being in the eye of a hurricane, with violent power all around tearing bricks from their foundations, a little too close for comfort. Even though he _knows_ they're helping out with construction, he can't help the twitch he makes towards where his blaster would be.

Old habits die hard.

Other workers have varying levels of apprehension and enthusiasm about this display of power, but everyone stays civil, and that's about as much as Good Cop hopes for.

Regardless, that mid-afternoon there's a new office building and two repaired apartment complexes that are up to code and ready to be used, even if they're a little more...colorful than strictly necessary.

Well, Good Cop thinks as the Master Builders argue on how to paint the walls, there's nothing wrong with that.

* * *

Benny pulls Good Cop aside towards the end of the day.

"Hey," he says. "Good work today, huh? How are you doing?"

"We got a lot done," Good Cop replies. "And I'm doing well. Did you need something?"

"No! No, not really," Benny says. "I was just wondering, for _no reason at all,_ how's Bad Cop?"

Good Cop raises his eyebrows. The only 'no reason' he can think of for Benny to ask after Bad Cop is because of something Business said, which could honestly be anything. "He's doing about as well as can be expected," Good Cop says.

Benny opens his mouth, closes it, then says, "Okay...but is that good? Like, is he...recovering? Or is he just..." He makes a vague hand gesture.

Good Cop looks at him. "I don't know what Business told you, but Bad Cop isn't getting better. He's dead."

It's easier to say than he expects--maybe because he's told himself so many times.

There's a long pause as Benny just stares at him in abject disbelief. "...What?"

"Bad Cop is dead," Good Cop says. "Business killed him two days before Taco Tuesday."

"But...that was almost three months ago!" Benny exclaims. "And you--you didn't say anything?"

Good Cop gives Benny a look. "I'm sorry," he says flatly, not feeling very sorry at all. "Was I supposed to? Was I supposed to come find you after Taco Tuesday and say, 'by the way, Bad Cop is dead' as if you and your Master Builder friends wouldn't celebrate over it?"

"No, that's, we wouldn't have-- Good Cop, we're your friends, and friends--"

Good Cop's mouth draws into a tight line. _"Bad Cop_ was my friend. You and your Master Builder clique are not." He zips up his jacket, and says, "If that's all, I'll be on my way."

He leaves then, with Benny sputtering in his wake.

* * *

_"Business is looking way better now," Emmet says as he enters the Wayne Manor's lounge. "His robot lady called from work and said people were sending a lot of letters to him. They're...probably not all very nice, but Business wants to go and take care of all of them sometime soon."_

_Wyldstyle looks up from her novel. Emmet has talked to Business every day for a week now to get him out of his funk and, amazingly enough, it's working. At least, Business has been willing to talk to some people (though not her) and go out of his room and do functional human things, like go out and make a public apology._

_"I heard the thing he said yesterday," Wyldstyle says. "The official apology. It was kind of stuffy, but good for him. Kind of overdue, but that's how those things are, I guess." She gestures to the food she's left out on the table. "Batman's butler showed me how to make tomato soup and grilled cheese, you should tell me how it tastes."_

_She'd asked Batman to try some, but he 'didn't have time' or something, and had run off to do...whatever it is he does, she supposes. That_ probably _wasn't a cover to get out of eating her cooking, but she can't be sure. At least he trusts them to be in his house without breaking anything, but then again, he trusts_ Business _to do the same, so that's not saying much._

_"Wow, thanks! You made a lot," Emmet says. He takes a sandwich off the pile and sits down._

_Wyldstyle shrugs. "I was kind of distracted, I guess. Like this whole thing with Business and Bad Cop? I don't get it."_

_"What about it?" Emmet asks through a mouthful of slightly burned grilled cheese._

_Wyldstyle leans back and throws her hands in the air. "I don't know! Like, why is Good Cop so mad at Business when they worked together for so long? Why did Good Cop even help us if he hates Master Builders so much? What the heck is_ up _with Business?"_

_"Oh." Emmet glances from one side to the other, then says, "Well, I don't know about Good Cop, but I could ask him, if you want."_

_"No," Wyldstyle says, a little quickly. She tries to ignore Good Cop's voice in the back of her head that sings, 'Insecurities', and continues, "I can ask him myself next time I see him. Although, he'll probably just end up yelling at me again."_

_Wyldstyle purses her lips. In the past few days, she's been vastly reassessing her image of Good Cop, because despite his constant (and kind of creepy) smiling and general cheerfulness, it seems like he might have some Bad Cop sized anger issues beneath it all. Whatever it is, he definitely has no problem telling her and her friends off, and he'll do it with a smile (because seriously, he never_ stops).

_"I hope not. I don't like it when you're all angry at each other," Emmet says. "But you should be fine? I think you said something last time that made him...not super happy."_

_Which, considering Good Cop, could be anything. Could've been the pasta, for all she knows._

_Wyldstyle scoffs. "Right. Thanks for the insight, Emmet. I'll just avoid saying anything to make him upset, why didn't I think of that?" She shakes her head. "I'll worry about that later. How's Business?"_

_Emmet pauses eating what is either his second or third sandwich. "Well, he went out and did the apology thing," he says. "But I don't think he really gets_ why _you have to say sorry? I mean, he's still going to try and figure out whose lives he messed up and try and un-mess things up, and I think he does actually feel bad about the stuff he did, which is good! But I guess he...doesn't really know how to be a good guy? He wants to, but he doesn't completely get why the stuff he was doing before was bad, which is...might be a problem."_

_Wyldstyle looks at Emmet, then sighs and reaches over to pick up a grilled cheese sandwich._

_It really was wishful thinking to assume that Business would suddenly be able to become a good guy after Taco Tuesday, and he_ did, _sort of, by not being all angry at Master Builders anymore, but..._

("Master Builders are not the only people who exist--"

"--took my brother and I never saw him again, so if _you_ think Business is well and dandy, then la-di-da to you, but _I_ \--"

"--reconstruction? Are you crazy? Cleanup has been run by volunteers since Business's flying machines went and wrecked everything. My friend and all her neighbors lost their house, and I'm trying to put some of them up in my place. Business doesn't give a lick about us, I tell you what--"

"--out of work for years, since Octan took everything over. I hear he doesn't even hire people anymore, replaced everyone with robots. The way he's going, soon the only jobs left will be robot repairman, and then what are we supposed to do?")

 _...Business really_ hasn't _fixed anything, has he? He'd done a lot of crappy stuff to get where he is that had been forgotten and buried until the broadcast, and then he_ ran.

_Wyldstyle doesn't have as much faith in Business becoming a good guy, but Emmet's accomplished miracles before. If anyone can teach Business to be a better person, it'll be him._

* * *

Good Cop sweeps away fallen leaves from around Ma's little rowan tree, then takes a seat next to it.

"Hey, B," he says, and it's a bit awkward, talking to a tree, but he pushes onwards. He pulls a pair of sunglasses out of his jacket pocket. "I finally went out and bought a new pair of aviators. They're not prescription, and they aren't the exact same frames you used to have, but they're pretty close."

He unfolds the glasses and switches them with his own.

Maybe he expects something to happen, or maybe he doesn't, but either way, there's nothing. No sense of Bad Cop in the back of his head, no sarcastic words.

"I don't get how you wore these things all the time," Good Cop continues. "In the car? And at night? It's barely overcast and I already feel like I can't see anything."

He pulls off the sunglasses and sighs. "I lost your old ones when you died, I can't remember if I ever actually told you. They're probably somewhere in Business's Artifact Chamber, or maybe he threw them out. I mean, it's not that big of a deal, they're just glasses. Got you new ones and everything."

He sets the sunglasses next to the rowan tree.

"I keep wishing I had something to bury," Good Cop says. "Or that you had a grave marker I could visit and talk to. That wouldn't be so bad. We could cremate your body, scatter the ashes around the rowan tree back home. You'd probably like that. You'd say it was cheesy and horrible, but you'd like it.

"Of course, the only problem is that I'm still alive, and I'd like to stay that way, so we can't burn your body. I guess I could find something else if I really wanted to, but Ma _did_ give me this tree."

He leans back, looking up into the cloudy sky. "Business issued an official apology a few days ago. I'm pretty sure his new friends pushed him to do it, but still, I didn't think he had it in him. And the Master Builders, they're helping us with reconstruction now. We still need to do cleanup the normal way, but with them and the 'new personnel' Business is going to bring, we might be done soon. It's...good.

"Personally? I think I'm doing all right. I don't know what I'm going to do when reconstruction is over. Go back to the police department, maybe? Or maybe I actually will go and become a machinist, that would be interesting. It's been a long time since I've used a lathe, but I could do it."

There's a light breeze, rustling the tree's leaves, and Good Cop looks back down at it.

"I'm still mad at you, you know. If I tried to list all of the stupid, reckless things you've ever done, we'd be here all day. But still, I can't help but miss you, even when you're an idiot. I've just got to...keep going, I guess."

Good Cop gets up and gives the tree a nod. "I've got to go. I'll talk to you soon, B."

* * *

Ma and Pa call him while he's on his way to the reconstruction site.

 _"How're you holding up, son?"_ Pa asks.

"I'm doing okay," Good Cop says. "Better than before, I think. I've just been...thinking a lot about Bad Cop--"

_"Son..."_

Good Cop sighs. Ma and Pa have never liked the good cop/bad cop nickname. "About _Rowan,_ and I guess I just...want to know what he was thinking."

 _"I know how you feel,"_ Pa says. _"It's not easy, losing someone close, but sometimes there's nothing you can do."_

"Yes, I realize," Good Cop says dryly. "But I guess what I mean is he changed a lot, working for Business. And some of those changes...I don't know."

He scratches behind his ear, trying to think of what to say, when he turns the corner and--

* * *

_"Benny?" Unikitty asks. "You look worried! Is something wrong?"_

_"Uh, no, I don't think so," Benny says. "It's just...Good Cop isn't here."_

_"No, he's not," Unikitty says as she settles down next to Benny on his somewhat, but not entirely precarious ledge. "Maybe he took a break today? Even Good Cop needs to take breaks sometimes."_

_"Maybe. It's just...I asked him about Bad Cop yesterday, and he got kind of angry at me," Benny says. "Like, really angry, actually. So maybe he's not here because he's still mad."_

_"Hm," Unikitty says as she sprawls out and leans on Benny. "Good Cop looked a lot less sad yesterday than at the party. But come to think of it, he_ does _look angry now. I don't think he would stay home just because he was mad, Bad Cop would never do that!"_

 _Benny sighs. "I know, but we're not talking about Bad Cop, because Bad Cop's been_ gone _this whole time, and, well, I've been thinking they were pretty much the same, but they're really not." It's an uncomfortable thing to admit, that he's misunderstood someone so badly for so long. "Yesterday, he told me that he wasn't my friend, and I've been thinking about that, y'know, because he's right. It's been three months and I don't know Good Cop at all and I just sort of assumed that we were friends because he was a friendly guy and we talked sometimes, but like, what am I supposed to do about that?"_

_"That's easy," Unikitty says. "Get to know him and become friends!"_

_"But what if he doesn't want to be friends?" Benny asks. "I don't think he likes me very much after talking about Bad Cop and me almost breaking into his apartment and the whole being a Master Builder thing."_

_Unikitty bats at Benny's helmet. "No worrying allowed! Do you want to be Good Cop's friend?"_

_Benny blinks. What kind of question is that? He remembers questions on a dark rooftop with cocoa, conversation while looking out at the stars from a terrible observatory, and thinks of Good Cop, Good Cop who listens, who's not afraid to ask questions, who always has a smile even when people come after his life. Even with whatever darkness is in him--and there_ is _darkness, Benny knows that now--he's a good person. "Of course I do. I haven't done a great job so far, but I think...I really want to get to know him." He pauses. "I...don't think he has a lot of friends."_

_"Then that's it," Unikitty says. "Go be friends, and you can deal with all the itty-bitty problems when they happen."_

_Benny smiles and scratches the back of Unikitty's neck. "Yeah, I guess I'm overthinking it. No need to get all up-and-up about things that haven't happened yet, right?" He huffs and looks out over the reconstruction work and says, "I'm still worried about him not being here. He was really upset yesterday."_

_Unikitty stretches, then says, "Go see him later. Then he knows you care and he won't be so mad anymore."_

_It really is that simple, in the end. "You're right. I don't know what I'd do without you, Unikitty," Benny says. He carefully pushes her off of his lap. "Come on, we have some reconstruction to do."_


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Good Cop is in trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of torture come up in this part. It's not graphic, but still.

It's dark.

It's dark and cold in the way that feels numb on the skin, like pressure against a painkiller, like deep tremors through the ground. It hurts-- _something_ hurts--and Good Cop can't even tell what, but he grasps at the pain, tries to pull himself up to the surface, tries to keep his thoughts from slipping away from him.

_"This is--happens--defy me!"_

Good Cop braces himself against the sound, against the pain that's coming, and--

_"No need to--cold shoulder, Good--Maybe not so bad--better this way--"_

The words--Business's words--are muffled and Good Cop can't even remember what he's done wrong this time, how he managed to offend Business's sensibilities yet again...

Maybe there wasn't anything, this time. Simply existing seemed like reason enough.

There's more words, and a grating sound that Good Cop vaguely recognizes as laughter, but he can't discern much more than noise--deafening noise that fills his ears and shakes his bones.

It crashes down like battering waves behind a waterfall, sending tremors through Good Cop's body. There's sharpness in there, tearing flesh from bone without even the grace to leave scars, and there's nothing to fight, nothing to do but to take it.

It continues for an age, and Good Cop's aching and tired and half-delirious by the end of it that he doesn't realize it's over.

_G?--there? Can you--me?_

_Bad Cop._

Good Cop's attention sharpens at once, focuses on the soft sound.

_Ciaran, plea--say anything--need to know--alive--_

i'm here, Good Cop says. b, i'm here--

_\--you have to--I can't--without you--_

b, Good Cop says, more urgently. i'm here, please, i hear you, listen!

_\--won't happen--please--don't leave--_

b, please, b, no, i'm here!

_\--I'm sorry--so sorry--_

i'm here...

* * *

Good Cop wakes to the hum of fluorescent lights and the taste of blood in his mouth. He's blindfolded and his hands are zip-tied behind his back, and, oh yes, he's tied to a chair.

He tries to remember exactly how he got here, but there's a pounding in his head that makes it hard to think.

He was...in Bricksburg, on his way to do...something. He was talking to somebody, and he turned the corner--

He remembers getting hit in the head, hard enough to lose his glasses, and getting stabbed in the leg, though in retrospect, that may have been a needle. He's not sure who attacked him, but judging from the current circumstances, it's not someone who likes him very much.

Well. That's nothing new.

He reaches back in his mind, back towards B to see if he has any thoughts, remembers anything that might help them out, and--

He almost physically feels his feet slip out from under him as he overreaches into nothingness. Bad Cop's warmth is gone, and nothing remains but an endless expanse of void and cold.

That's right, Good Cop thinks as he drags himself away from the borders of his mind and snaps back to harsh awareness, B's gone now. He's been dead three months, he can't take over, he can't help right now. Good Cop takes a few deep breaths and tries to calm his racing heartbeat. Even if Bad Cop's gone, there's no need to panic. He's handled worse situations before.

He just has to...stay calm.

"Sleeping Beauty's awake?" he hears someone with a metallic voice say. "About time."

Good Cop hears footsteps, heavy boots on concrete, and there's a telltale whirring sound of motors and hissing pneumatics. A robot?

Someone grabs his chin with a gloved hand, forcing him to look up--an action that would be more effective if Good Cop could _see._

"You know who I am?" the man--machine?--asks.

Good Cop doesn't, but he doesn't feel the need to say so.

"Don't want to talk?" The person lets go of Good Cop. "Well, that's fine with me. You can't talk your way out of this, anyways."

The first hit comes out of nowhere, smashing Good Cop in the jaw. The second hits him in the stomach.

It continues like that for a long time.

* * *

_Going to Good Cop's apartment after reconstruction apparently becomes A Thing._

_Wyldstyle isn't sure how it happens, because all she knows is that Benny wanted to go make sure Good Cop was fine or something, and of course Emmet wanted to go with, and of course she was going with him, and then there was Batman and Unikitty and they're all standing in the hallway in front of Good Cop's apartment._

_It's kind of a crap place, in Wyldstyle's opinion. The paint in the hallway is flaking and a couple of the lights are broken and it's kind of cramped, even before accounting for the fact that there are five people in it._

_Somehow, she'd expected someone like Good Cop to be living somewhere...nicer? More expensive, at least._

_There's just something weird about visiting the house of your sworn enemy--even if it's a former sworn enemy--and seeing their little worn-out welcome mat and dingy apartment building. It's humanizing, and Wyldstyle finds that she doesn't really like it._

_Benny knocks on the door of number 39, but there's no response._

_"Maybe he's out of town?" Emmet says. "He visits his parents sometimes, and they're kinda far away."_

_"How do_ you _know where Good Cop's parents live?" Wyldstyle asks before she can stop herself._

_Emmet shrugs. "Well, he's mentioned them once or twice. They weren't really talking for a while after Taco Tuesday, but he started visiting them again like...a month later?"_

_Wyldstyle isn't sure she'd want to ever talk to a son who tried to destroy the world, but then again, she's not a parent. Maybe that's one of those weird things._

_"If he was leaving town, wouldn't he tell someone?" she asks. "It's what a reasonable person would do."_

_"Yeah, but...it's Good Cop," Benny says, frowning. "If he told someone, well, he's been pretty clear that it wouldn't be us. Can you try calling him? He's probably fine, but I'd feel better if I knew for sure."_

_I don't have his number, Wyldstyle starts saying when Emmet nods and pulls out his phone. She has to bite down her first indignant reaction, because Emmet and Good Cop worked together with reconstruction for like two months, of course Emmet has Good Cop's phone number._

_"He's not answering," Emmet says. "Maybe the signal's bad?"_

_Benny glances down, looking dejected. "Yeah, maybe," he says. "I guess we'll see if he shows up tomorrow."_

_"Well, that was a waste of time," Batman says under his breath._

_Wyldstyle finds herself agreeing._

* * *

Good Cop hates silence.

He doesn't think he's ever hated anything more, as he stalks back to his office under the cover of planning the next move against the Master Builders.

He taps his pencil incessantly, just trying to fill the empty space with noise, try and fill the void that Bad Cop's absence has left.

He's calm. Angry beyond belief, yes, but calm. He thinks it might be shock.

Business--not 'Lord', Good Cop will never call him 'Lord' again--doesn't seem particularly concerned about Good Cop now that the 'rebellious' Bad Cop has been silenced with prejudice. Good Cop is docile. Good Cop is scared. Good Cop follows orders.

He knows what will happen if he can't.

And, perhaps it's true. Good Cop has never enjoyed fighting or hurting people, he's been scared ever since the first time Business tried to destroy him, and he does what he can to avoid Business's wrath.

But one thing has never changed, and it's that he knows how to put his personal wants aside and do what has to be done, and now that both Bad Cop and his parents are gone, he doesn't have anything else to lose.

Business will pay.

Good Cop will make it happen. He'll crush Business's ambitions, stop this farce with the Kragle, make sure the ingrate _knows_ why he failed. And when that's done, perhaps he'll see how Business takes to one of the many 'lessons' he'd given Good Cop in the past, see if it's electricity or knives that makes him scream louder, see if he likes it when someone takes him apart from the inside out.

He scrubs his hand over his face, over unbroken skin that doesn't even have the decency to _show_ that something is wrong. There's a hollowness in his mind, gouged out with Business's Scepter, and the space where B should be is just an unexpected step on the stairs, the heartbeat between overbalance and impact, no more than a sense of panic and freefall.

 _I'll always be here,_ Bad Cop had said. _No matter what, we'll do this together._

Well, Bad Cop was wrong, and now there's nothing left but silence.

* * *

Good Cop breathes. In, out.

Shallow breaths, ones that don't aggravate the bruises on his ribs. Counts the time before someone comes back for another round.

There's a pattern to it, in the loosest sense of the word. Something like every hour or two, someone will come down the stairs, taunt him, hit him for a while, get bored, and leave. Nobody seems to want to spend much time around him besides that, which is really only to his benefit.

His captors have untied him once since capturing him to escort him to a restroom, which Good Cop suspects is more out of a desire to not clean up after him than any sort of graciousness. He's been given a small amount of water, though food, of course, has not been provided.

Suffice to say, Good Cop is faring about as well as can be expected, which is to say, not great but better than many of the alternatives. He's hungry and thirsty and he aches all over and there's blood in the back of his mouth and a rib or two might be cracked, but they haven't sliced him open or burned him or done...any number of things that Good Cop would rather not experience right now.

There hasn't been an opportunity to get the blindfold off yet, but that doesn't mean Good Cop's completely clueless. The temperature and slightly musty smell, as well as the sounds of footsteps in the room indicate that he's in a concrete basement. He's heard some rattling of an older model of water boiler somewhere to his left and creaky floorboards above, which implies he's towards the outer reaches of town, outside the range of Business's neurotic renovations, making everything as squeaky clean and up-to-date as possible. He heard the distinct sound of a coin chute and washing machine a while ago, too, which would make this a residential building, and some sort of shared property like an apartment, not a house. The fluorescent lights haven't been on for the last three sessions either, which most likely means there's enough sunlight coming in to see by and that it's daytime--which of course means that he's been here around twenty-four hours. 

Based on the sounds of footsteps and voices so far, there are five people: three men, two women. He's still not entirely sure who they are, but they've hit him with fists and other blunt objects and shouted about how Bad Cop was going to pay for what he's done, which...really doesn't narrow down the suspects.

The most he can tell is that these people aren't doing this in any professional capacity. They're leaving him unattended for long stretches of time and they haven't indicated wanting anything from him besides just wailing on him--and they hit very hard, to be fair--but they're not trying to extract as much pain as they can, the way Business would have, back in the day.

It doesn't make the bruises hurt any less, but it's vaguely reassuring in the sense that things could be much worse. These people are angry, not experienced or pointlessly cruel.

Angry people make mistakes.

He hears creaking upstairs and holds his breath. Listens.

There are muffled voices, arguing over something--over him, if he had to guess--then some heavy footsteps trailing off.

The door latch slides open and Good Cop hears a _click-click-click_ of high heels on concrete, stopping next to him. "Well, hello there," the person, a deep-voiced woman, says. "Miss me?"

Not particularly, Good Cop doesn't say. She and her combination wrench were not pleasant company, last they met.

The woman jabs the end of her wrench under Good Cop's chin, digging the open side into the crook between his jaw and throat. "Still giving me the silent treatment? Didn't your mother ever tell you that's rude?"

Good Cop doesn't respond. He doesn't have the energy to muster up a reaction and he's never seen the point in talking to captors anyways. Especially because he doesn't intend to leave himself here for any longer than necessary.

"Well, you're stubborn. I'll give you that," the woman says with a derisive growl. "Let's see if we can get you to scream this time."

The wrench cracks down on Good Cop's shoulder, and he swallows his instinctive yelp of pain.

Not yet, he thinks. But soon.

* * *

_Good Cop doesn't show up to the reconstruction site the next morning._

_That's fine, because Good Cop's left for a few days without notice before, and he said he could take care of himself, so he should be okay._

_Except._

_"Hey, uh, Edmund," one of the workers at the reconstruction site says as he comes in at around ten in the morning._

_"Emmet," Emmet corrects, putting down his clipboard. "Oh, Harry, what's up?"_

_"Well, when I was heading home yesterday, I found these, out by the sandwich shop on Fifth," Harry says, holding out a broken pair of glasses. "Thought you might know who they belong to, since you're in charge and all. Someone must've lost them."_

_Emmet starts to say that he's really not in charge at all and that he doesn't know how to find people who are missing glasses when he actually_ looks _at the plain black round-frame glasses and stops dead._

_Those are Good Cop's glasses._

_They look like they've been stepped on, because the bridge of the nose is all twisted and one of the lenses has popped out, but it's definitely Good Cop's. Emmet doesn't know anyone else who wears glasses quite that circular._

_But why would Good Cop throw out his glasses? It's not like he got a new pair or anything, and Good Cop wouldn't litter--he's given enough lectures to people about it to make that clear. So why were his glasses out where someone could find them? The only thing that would make sense was--_

_"Uh, Emmet? Hello?" Harry asks, waving a hand in front of Emmet's face._

_"Right, right, yeah, thanks," Emmet stammers, taking the glasses from Harry. "I'll get these back right away!"_

_And then he runs straight for Lucy._

_"I'm telling you, you can't enter the reconstruction site!" Lucy yells at a stern old woman. "We've got Master Builders at work, and it's dangerous for people to be walking around willy-nilly!"_

_"I'm not trying to enter the reconstruction site," the woman replies, not backing down in the least. "I'm trying to find my son, and I know for a fact that he did work here."_

_"Ma'am, I can assure you, we don't know anyone named Ciaran here. You have to be mistaken. Please move out of the way so we can work," Lucy says._

_The woman shifts her weight to her back foot and crosses her arms. She's wearing a green sweater and half-moon glasses, and her grey hair is tied up into a tight bun._

_She looks way scarier than any person that age has any right to be looking._

_"Hey, uh," Emmet walks between Lucy and the woman. "What's going on?"_

_"This lady marched up demanding to know where her son Ciaran is. I don't know any Ciaran," Lucy says. "But she isn't listening to me, and she won't get out of the way."_

_Emmet scratches the back of his head. He doesn't know anyone named Ciaran either, and with Good Cop's glasses, he's not sure if he has time to look._

_"Right, um," Emmet says. "Ma'am, I don't know who Ciaran is, either, and I've met everyone working on the reconstruction site, so maybe you, uh, made a mistake?"_

_The woman looks at Emmet sharply, then stops. Before Emmet can react, she's snatched Good Cop's glasses out of his hands and is asking him where he found them._

_Emmet blinks. "What? Someone else found them, I didn't find them, and--hey, wait a second, why do you need to know?"_

_The woman purses her lips. "These are Ciaran's glasses. He hasn't changed them in years. Where did you find them?"_

_"Those are Good Cop's glasses," Emmet corrects._

_The woman makes a sour face. "Yes, I suppose he used that horrible nickname. He has a perfectly good name, but last I heard, he hasn't used it for years..."_

_"Wait, wait, wait," Lucy cuts in. "You mean you're_ Good Cop's _mom? That's, that's--" She makes a face between concern and confusion. "That's weird," she finishes lamely._

_It's not too weird, now that Emmet knows they're related. They kind of look the same, with the same eyes and nose and face shape, though Good Cop's a bit thinner. They even have the same angry faces, if Emmet thinks about it hard enough._

_"He was in the middle of a call with us yesterday morning and...something happened that made him drop the phone. We heard shouting. We tried calling back, but he hasn't answered or called us since and we have reason to suspect he was attacked," Good Cop's mom says authoritatively. She looks at Lucy and Emmet, then down at the twisted glasses in her hands, and her gaze softens. "Please, I need to find him. He's the only son we have left."_

* * *

Good Cop swings off of his horse onto the dusty ground of Old West. His handcuffs clink on the back of his belt and they're not quite spurs, but the sound is close enough that he doesn't feel entirely out of place.

It's dry.

It's hot and dry and Good Cop would be soaked in sweat if it didn't keep evaporating off of his skin. If he had a choice, he'd never come out here, but it's never been about what he wants, hasn't been for many years.

He has a job to do.

He has a megaphone in his right hand and his blaster ready by his left and they're both heavy, unfamiliar weights. It should be Bad Cop holding these weapons, not him, and not for the first time, he feels doubt.

What is he even fighting for? Bad Cop is gone, Business will never have his loyalty again, and the world--to be honest, he doesn't care about it.

He could cut and run. Nobody would ever find him, he could make sure of that. He's alone now, and that's simultaneously the most terrifying and empowering thing he's thought in years.

There's nobody to hold his leash, nobody to stop him from taking what he wants, and he wants Business to _burn._

He clenches his fist and tries to still his adrenaline-shaky hands. Any moment now, he'll have the Special in his sights.

He's never liked bloodshed, but he'll get that Piece of Resistance back, one way or another. It's the key to ending all this, and he's ready to take the steps he has to take to make all of Business's plans come crashing down.

It's all he's got left, now.

Then there's an explosion and fire and Good Cop can just make out three figures scrambling onto the rooftop.

"Freeze!" he shouts. His voice has never been as intimidating as Bad Cop's, but it's all he has to work with.

He squints and can barely make out the girl mouthing something that looks suspiciously like "Good Cop?".

"I just want the Piece of Resistance," Good Cop says. "If you hand it over, you all walk free."

The girl snarls at him. "We'd let him die before we gave it to you!" she shouts.

"I don't want to fight, but if you don't hand over the Piece, I _will_ use force," Good Cop says. The chances of them complying are razor-thin, but it's all he can do to make the offer.

They stare at each other for a long second, sizing each other up. Good Cop suspects he knows what they're thinking, that Good Cop is soft, that maybe they can take him head-on.

And then--

"Run! Now!" the girl shouts, breaking for the edge of the roof.

"Get them!" Good Cop orders, bringing on a rain of red blaster fire.

He grits his teeth as he swings back onto his horse and snaps the reins for speed. They won't get away.

* * *

The thing about pain is that there's no such thing as desensitization. Every hit hurts just like the last, and there's no easy way out of it.

One of his captors, the man with the robotic parts, presses a baseball bat into his throat. It's not hard enough to choke, but it's close.

"What's the point?" the man asks. "My buddies say you haven't said a word since we put you down here. Not a peep. What's with all the bravado?"

Good Cop breathes. It hurts, and he feels light-headed, and he can't get air into his lungs, no matter how hard he tries. He tries not to think about what that might mean.

"There's nobody coming to save you, Cop," the man says. "Not if you wait, not if you scream. Just us and whatever we want to do to you."

There's a long pause, filled with nothing but Good Cop's wheezing.

The man takes the bat away from Good Cop's throat and taps it on the ground. "What dignity are you possibly saving at this point? You're alone, Cop." He spits at Good Cop. "Think about it."

The man leaves and shuts the door behind him.

Good Cop closes his eyes, feels the zip ties around his wrists that he's laboriously filed away at against the edges of his chair. A good yank will snap them.

Yes, he thinks. He's alone.

No one will save him but himself.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Good Cop deals with his kidnappers with varying amounts of success.

_By some sick twist of fate, it's Business who holds the key to finding Good Cop again._

_"A lot of the cameras are still up," Business says. "Most of them got destroyed by Master Builders after the, uh, the thing, but with how many I had everywhere, of course a bunch of them got through."_

_Business is extraordinarily subdued as he taps through screens of data, even considering his mood since the broadcast went up, and Benny isn't sure if it's because he's concerned for Good Cop or because Ma Cop punched him in the face twice._

("--and _that's_ for the son you took from me. Now _help_ us find him or a few punches will be the _least_ of your problems!")

_Benny chews his lip. There's something that twists in his chest when he sees Good Cop's mangled glasses and imagines what Good Cop could be going through right now--has_ been _going through since yesterday._

_He remembers the state in which they found Business after the broadcast. He wouldn't talk, wouldn't eat, and he looked like he'd been spit out the wrong end of a combustion engine. He can't even imagine Good Cop being like that, and frankly, he doesn't want to. It's just_ wrong _to think of Good Cop, so happy and eager to help all the time, beaten down and broken into something they can't even recognize._

_"Here." Someone pushes a hot mug into Benny's hands. "You look like you need it."_

_Benny looks up at Pa Cop, who's soft in the places where Ma Cop is sharp, who's steady and constant where Ma Cop is ready to personally round up each and every person who's involved with Good Cop's disappearance. He takes the mug._

_"Thanks," he says, and sips it. It's hot cocoa, and it's rich and dark and smooth, with a hint of bitterness, and it tastes like late night conversations on rooftops under the stars. He remembers Good Cop's soft voice, asking about trust and forgiveness and he--_

_"Hey, now," Pa Cop says, pulling Benny in. "It's all right. We're all worried, but we're looking, and we'll surely find him."_

_Benny blinks at the contact and realizes that he's_ crying. _He wipes his eyes and says, "Sorry."_

_"No need to apologize, now," Pa Cop says. "We're all under a lot of stress. If you want to talk about it, I'm here."_

_"No, it's nothing," Benny says. "It's just...the cocoa. Good Cop, or, uh, Ciaran, he made some for me a while ago when I was thinking about some rough stuff and..." He trails off._

_"Ciaran's a good kid," Pa Cop says after a long pause. "He doesn't think he is because he has a hard time caring about other people and he can do some horrible things when he's pushed to it. Without his...other half, I don't know what would have happened to him. He might have eaten himself alive." Pa Cop sighs. "He always wanted to be better, and worked to be better, kinder. Maybe that's not enough. It's hard to say."_

_Benny glances up at Pa Cop. There's something incredibly private about learning this, about someone he doesn't even know that well. "Should...should you be telling me this?"_

_Pa Cop shrugs. "I'm not sure myself," he says. "He'll be angry enough that you know his name. But once you're looking to be friends with him, you have to know he's not always the happy man he looks on the outside. I suspect he's not very happy at all these days, though he'd never say so."_

_Benny thinks about Good Cop the last time he saw him, angry that Benny would have the audacity to suggest he could be trusted with Bad Cop's secret before they'd even exchanged twenty words, about how easily that smile dropped from Good Cop's face, how on-guard he seemed to be, and he thinks, no, that's not what a happy person looks like._

_"I want to be his friend, but I don't know what it'll take for him to trust me," Benny admits. "I just...want to help, not sit around here while everyone else does...useful things."_

_"Be there for him," Pa Cop says. "He has precious few people who will, after everything."_

_"Hey, we found something!" Wyldstyle yells from over Business's shoulder. "We're not sure exactly where he is, but we've got a place to start looking."_

_Benny gets up to his feet in a flash. Pa Cop smiles at him._

_"We'll bring him back."_

* * *

Cloud Cuckooland is an eyesore.

Good Cop sits on the outskirts of the city, well out of sight and resolutely looking away from the rainbow mess. It's Monday already, and both he and the Master Builders are running out of time.

This has put him into a precarious situation. These Master Builders aren't expecting an attack on their secret city, of course, but Cloud Cuckooland is not a fortress, and it's not particularly rife with escape routes, except into the ocean. If he loses the Piece of Resistance, then everything is lost.

He can accept that he doesn't stand a chance against this many Master Builders. Even Bad Cop would shy away from these odds, and he was the one who was good in the heat of battle. But that doesn't mean his plans are all for naught.

If Good Cop can't get the Piece of Resistance from them, he'll have them bring it to him. As long as it gets to Octan, he can work with it.

All of the Master Builders are in a meeting right now, probably about how they need to mobilize and use the Special's astounding powers (and what powers are they? He hasn't seen any) to finally defeat Business once and for all.

Well, Good Cop knows that getting Master Builders to work together is harder than gathering water with a rake, so he'll give them some motivation.

Good Cop pulls out a small roll of paper. It's several sheets thick, and it's the full floor plans to Octan, the copy he's going to 'accidentally' drop for the Master Builders to use.

"Sir, we've set the explosives," a robot crackles into the radio. "Primed and ready for detonation."

A ring of explosives around the base of the town hall where the Master Builders are having their meeting will surely flush them out.

"Good," Good Cop says. He puts the blueprints into his pocket, puts earplugs in, then gets to his feet. "I'm going in."

He walks straight into the town hall, quietly and alone.

It's chaos in there. Everyone is yelling about some kind of outrage, about something to do with the Special, so incensed that nobody even seems to notice him.

He fires once into the air.

Everything stills.

"This is a raid," he says calmly.

There's half a second of stillness, then a hundred Master Builders leaping at him at once. Good Cop presses the detonator.

The building crashes down around them and everything descends into chaos.

* * *

Freeing himself takes a long time.

It shouldn't, once he's got his wrists free, but between what he's becoming increasingly convinced is a punctured lung and his sore, sore, everything, it takes a long time to loosen the ropes around his chair, get rid of the blindfold, then untie his legs.

It's a tense affair. If his captors catch him, he's as good as dead.

Eventually the ropes fall away and he stands, slowly, carefully. Moving hurts, pulls at his sore muscles and bruises, and he'd hate to think what he looks like right now under his clothes. Besides his ribs, he doesn't think any of his bones are broken, though he can't speak for any possible organ damage. He just has to last until the paramedics get him, that's all.

He massages his wrists and looks around. Everything is as he suspected, more or less. There's a concrete basement, a water boiler, windows letting in some sunlight, and a locked door that presumably leads to stairs.

Next order of business. Escape. Get help.

The windows are too high and small to climb out of, and the door is too sturdy for him to break down in his current state. He doesn't know his address, so simply stealing a cell phone isn't good enough. He has to get out or get to a landline, and he'll have to either stay hidden or neutralize all of his captors first.

It's a tall order for someone who's been beaten black and blue. At least wearing the blindfold meant that they hadn't tried punching him in the eyes, because his vision without glasses is already bad enough without having his eyes swollen shut.

Good Cop looks at the door. It looks like his only way out, and it's locked. Fortunately, there's no window.

Good Cop has never been particularly interested in fighting fair, and now is no exception; an ambush will suit his purposes nicely. He looks around for a usable weapon and sees some cardboard boxes and a bike in the back. Storage, probably. It's not like they'd expected him to escape.

He limps over and takes a look. A brief search reveals nothing useful in the boxes, but the bike is another story. Carefully, he unclamps the seat and pulls it and the aluminum rod out of the frame. His shoulders and arms protest the movement, but he gets it out. It's easier than pulling a pipe off of the boiler or a leg off of the chair, and it's an appropriate size and heft. It's not exactly the perfect weapon, but it'll do.

He holds it rod side out and waits by the door.

He's a patient man.

* * *

_They narrow down Good Cop's location to some building within the span of about four blocks maybe half a mile away from where the Wall used to be._

_In Wyldstyle's expert opinion, that's not that great, but it's definitely better than trying to comb the entire city. They split up into pairs--one Master Builder each--and divide up the buildings to check._

_Wyldstyle, for whatever stupid reason, is paired with Business._

_It's not that Wyldstyle really has anything against Business, or at least she's not as angry about it anymore. It's just...she has concerns._

_"Okay, Business," Wyldstyle says before they set out, "I need to get this clear first: what the heck is up with you and Bad Cop?"_

_Business blinks up at her like he doesn't understand._

_"I mean, you guys worked together for like, seven years, didn't you? And now Good Cop hates your guts and we haven't seen Bad Cop since before Taco Tuesday, so what's going on?" Wyldstyle asks. "Did you do something? Did he do something?"_

_"I-I mean," Business stammers, a far cry from the confident megalomaniac who declared he'd destroy the world._

_"I need to know, because we're trying to find Good Cop right now, and I can't have you coming along unless I know you're really trying to help." And won't sabotage the mission, she adds silently._

_"B-but_ you _don't even like him," Business says. "Good Cop. And he doesn't like you."_

_Wyldstyle crosses her arms. "Yeah, well we didn't like_ you, _either, and we still helped you, didn't we?"_

_Business's face crumples into something equal parts resigned and disappointed. "Yeah."_

_When it's clear Business has nothing else to say, Wyldstyle huffs. "Look, I'm not Emmet. I'm not good at making people feel better about themselves. But I can tell you the truth, and the truth is this: You hurt a lot of people. You haven't hurt people recently, which is a good start, but you also haven't done a lot to prove you've gotten better." She puts her hands on her hips, then says, "The only thing, and the_ only _thing that gets Good Cop angry is talking about you or Bad Cop or both. And no, I don't like him because he's creepy and he gets confrontational and he's got some major anger issues, but we're trying to find and help him right now and I need to know that you won't hurt him. So what is your deal with Bad Cop?"_

_There's another pause, then Business says, "I did a bad thing to Bad Cop." He glances down at the ground, then adds, "He's not going to get better."_

_That's not descriptive at all, but it seems like as much as she's going to get. "So what about Good Cop?"_

_"What about him?"_

_"Do you really want to help him? Or should I just leave you here?" Wyldstyle asks._

_"I...yes," Business says. "Good Cop, he...talked to me a while ago. And I guess I, I hurt him and Bad Cop a lot when they were working for me, and, I mean, I was trying to, but I never knew how much I actually did. I never really thought about it, and... He said that I have to stop running away, and I, just, I want to make things better. If I can."_

_It's about as sincere a confession as Wyldstyle's ever heard, so she nods and says, "For the record, Emmet thinks there's good in you. You and Good Cop both. I'm not as good as he is at seeing that sort of thing, but I trust him." She jabs a finger into Business's face. "So don't you dare prove him wrong, or I'll, I'll...sic Ma Cop on you again."_

_By the way Business blanches, it's clearly an effective threat._

_"Come on," Wyldstyle says as she pulls some bricks up to assemble a hoverboard, "we've got a Cop to find."_

* * *

Good Cop just about leaps down the stairs when the alarm goes off.

Those idiots. Those _idiots._

_Who_ tries to break in to a building filled to the brim with security by _blowing up the front door?_

Business is readying his departure, and there's no way the Master Builders will get there on time now.

"Capture the Master Builders on the ground floor," Good Cop barks into his radio. "Alpha squad on me, we're taking the fourth sector entry."

There's a staticky _"Roger"_ from his radio, and then it's just his feet pounding on the linoleum.

The Master Builders have ruined this chance, just like they've ruined every other chance, but not everything is lost, because there's still a little bit of time. The Kragle can still be stopped. He tells himself this to keep from punching a wall.

He reaches the manufacturing level where the Special and the girl are.

"--going to come in through the cooling vents," the girl says from around the corner.

Good Cop takes a deep breath. He's found them. That means he's still got a chance. "Actually, I'd rather you didn't," he says, stepping out under the floodlight.

There's a long silence as the girl and the Special turn and stare at him in horror. He can almost hear their plans shattering in their heads.

Then the girl rushes him, and he does _not_ have time for this when all that stands between them and the world ending is the Kragle's long warmup time. He grabs her by the wrist and twists, overbalances her and puts her down on the ground, face down, and says, "Please don't. I don't want to fight you guys."

"Great way of showing it," she snarls at him.

So he tells her. Business has gone, the Kragle is almost ready, and they're not getting out of Octan alive. At least, not without help.

They don't believe him, of course, but they don't have anything to lose, and Good Cop, for better or for worse, doesn't either.

He's got the security access to get the Special and his merry band of Master Builders out without Business's knowledge, but there's no way to do it unnoticed by everything else, and once he gets them out, he'll have a big fight on his hands.

His chances against all of Business's robots are less than favorable.

But he has a job to do, and he's never been one to back down when the time came. This will be no different.

"Stop the Kragle," he tells them as they fly off in the blue astronaut's spaceship, and it hurts him so much to have to hand the reins over, to trust something so important to these people he's spent so much time fighting. "Stop Business."

They're gone before they can respond. It's just as well; the robots have caught up. Slowly, Good Cop turns and faces a sea of red eyes.

He swings his batons up into position. If he's going down, he'll do it fighting.

* * *

The first one never sees the bicycle seat coming.

Good Cop floors him with one swing, and makes sure he's down for the count with a second one.

It's fortunate that it works, because the pain in Good Cop's chest nearly floors him, too, and he's gasping for air and trying to breathe through the light-headedness and injured ribs. It takes him a few minutes to gather himself enough to get back to his feet. He has to blink a few times to see straight again, but when he does, he realizes he recognizes this man. He's one of that group who had attacked him after the broadcast, the ones he'd put into the hospital because he'd been just that angry.

Good Cop purses his lips. This is purely revenge, then.

He doesn't dwell on that thought, just takes the man's cell phone, then gags him with the blindfold and rolls him out of the stairwell and into the basement.

One down.

So how to take care of the rest? Good Cop has heard at least two people on the level immediately above--the robot man and probably one of the women. There's no way he'll be able to fight them both off, and sneaking to a higher level to look for a landline is just asking for trouble when he can't breathe quietly, much less walk unnoticed.

Good Cop looks at the man's phone--an old model, one without a password, but also without a GPS that he can find his current address from. He flips through it a bit, then finds the text messages.

It seems that these guys are all part of some two-bit gang and had been personally offended by Good Cop beating them in that alleyway. They'd been following him for some days before grabbing him, which was somewhat concerning. It was just his luck that he'd been on the phone and distracted when they'd attacked, or he probably could have fended them off.

He glances at the unconscious man beside him. He'd been one of the men who'd been particularly...motivated by Good Cop's refusal to talk or scream. Maybe...

He flips through the man's texts some more, trying to decipher the man's personality and texting style, then finds a number in the address book with an attached portrait that looks like she has long enough hair to be the wrench woman. He sends a text.

_> >im gonna break his arm_

_> >hes gonna scream so loud, jsut watch_

The response is almost instantaneous.

_< <You don't even know how to break an arm_

Good Cop sends another text back.

_> >come down and ill show u_

_< <Your going to mess it up_

_< <Wait for me_

After about a minute, Good Cop hears a door open upstairs into the stairwell, and high heels coming down, and knows that she's taken the bait.

He picks up his bicycle seat and slips back inside the basement door.

Two for two, coming up.

* * *

_Zero for two._

_Emmet sighs and gets out of the building. There's still a lot of ground to cover._

_The block he and Benny are investigating is mostly abandoned, which is great because it means they can go into the buildings to search for Good Cop without ruining anybody's house, but also not that great because it's an entire block of apartment buildings and that's a_ lot _of places to look._

_He and Benny go through apartments as fast as they can, and there's not a lot of time for talk--not a lot of time for anything except searching._

_Everything's gonna be fine, that's what he tells himself. Everyone's working together to find Good Cop, and Good Cop knows how to take care of himself, he said so, so they'll find him and everything will be great and awesome and good again._

_Emmet ducks to look under desks and goes into dusty closets, scanning everything for something that looks like Good Cop._

_He's worried. He'll admit that. Good Cop was there to talk to him when he couldn't talk to anybody else, and he always had a smile for everyone even when he wasn't happy--and maybe it took Emmet a long time to see it, until that angry conversation with Lucy over dinner, but Good Cop wasn't happy a lot._

_He doesn't know if Good Cop has anybody to talk to him when he's down like Good Cop did for him, or to, to, rescue him from conversations, or lend jackets, or talk about TV shows. And Emmet...Emmet remembers before he had friends, before he had Lucy and Vitruvius and Benny and Unikitty and even Batman when he's not being super scary all the time._

_And Good Cop._

_So he looks everywhere through abandoned buildings because, even though Good Cop has never asked for help, he needs it, and Emmet wants to be there the way Good Cop was for him._

_He and Benny get out of the tenth building when they hear shouting from a building across the street._

_Without even a glance at each other, they_ run.

* * *

Good Cop is many things, but overconfident isn't one. He's well aware of his limits, because if someone hadn't been there to yank back on Bad Cop's leash, B would have gotten them both killed years ago.

So when Good Cop faces Business's army of robots with nothing more than two batons and a burning sense of vengeance, he knows he won't make it out intact.

"Surrender now or perish," one of the robots intones, blaster raised.

Good Cop doesn't respond. Surrender's an easy word for death and there's nothing to gain from arguing with robots, especially not Business's personal guard.

"Deploying suppression measures in 3, 2--"

Good Cop kicks the robot in the face, and suddenly they're on him like a metal net of legs and arms.

No escape.

Good Cop fights like a man possessed, goes from smashing eyes to cracking arm rivets and leg pistons to ripping out exposed wires and motors, but there's too many robots and only one of him, and when he tries to push to the exit, they push back twice as hard.

When he steps back to dodge another blaster shot, the heel of his boot slips on the edge of the launch deck, straight over the precipitous fall into Bricksburg below.

He pushes forward, tries to widen the deadly small space between him and a traumatic and expedient date with the tarmac, but they push back and Good Cop's back foot loses purchase completely.

He falls.

* * *

It takes about twenty seconds for everything to go wrong.

The wrench woman goes down just as easily as her friend, but she manages to yell for help before Good Cop gets the second hit in, and suddenly there's doors opening, footsteps approaching, and nowhere for Good Cop to run.

He does what he can and jams the bicycle seat into the stairway hand rail so the rod blocks the stairs, then grabs the woman's wrench. It's larger than he thought it was, almost two feet long with considerable weight.

Just then, the robot man and the other woman get down to the basement. The man doesn't see the bicycle seat in time and it hits him in the stomach, sending him and the now-dented rod tumbling down the stairs.

Good Cop cracks him across the back with the wrench, just to be safe.

And then the woman is on him, flashing brass knuckles, and there's blood in his mouth and bursting pain in his arm and he swings blindly at her with the wrench, hard enough to feel it impact soft tissue, then bone.

The woman recoils, and Good Cop hits her again. This time, he feels something snap, and she screams.

It's all Good Cop can do to roll her off of him and wheeze for breath. His right arm is definitely cracked if not broken, and everything is burning and he can't stand, no matter how hard he tries.

The last man makes it down, pauses at the landing, looks down at the pile of bodies at the bottom. Good Cop slowly, very slowly pushes himself to a sitting position with burning muscles and cracked bones, and grips his wrench.

The man's red-mirrored sunglasses flash in the sunlight. "You _monster._ I'll kill you!" he roars as he leaps down the stairs, and--

Good Cop gathers his strength and cracks the wrench across the man's ankles, tripping him.

The man crashes down the last few steps, and Good Cop jabs the open end of the wrench into the man's neck. He's panting, his face is slick with sweat and blood and his hands are shaking. He's dizzy and he can't get up if he tried, but there's at least one thing left he can do.

"I..." Good Cop breathes. "I don't...intend...to let you...outlive me."

The man's eyes widen behind his red, red, glasses, and he tries to get up, tries to get away, but Good Cop has him pinned to the concrete.

Good Cop lifts the wrench, brings it down.

It doesn't make a good sound.

And then, at long last, Good Cop lets the wrench slip out of his grip. The world is spinning and he fights his own muscles to breathe, fights the fog creeping in from the back of his mind to stay awake, even fights to get up, get to a phone, but that's well beyond his capabilities at this point.

What a rotten, unlucky way to die, he thinks.

_sorry, b._

* * *

_Benny and Emmet burst into the building, and what they see is not what they expect._

_Which is to say, they don't see anything. It's a normal, empty apartment lobby._

_"You heard something, didn't you?" Benny asks Emmet._

_"Yeah, I did," Emmet says. "And there's way more stuff here than everywhere else we looked, this has to be the right place."_

_Then there's a scream--the kind of scream that puts teeth on edge and sounds like trails of broken glass. Benny's heart leaps into his throat. What if, after all of this, they're too late?_

_"Downstairs!" Emmet shouts from the stairwell. "They're downstairs! Hurry!"_

_Benny rushes over to the stairwell, takes the steps down two at a time, and stops dead._

_There's five bodies, all piled at the bottom of the steps, and in the middle of it all is Good Cop, bloody and bruised and very emphatically_ not _awake._

_"Good Cop!" Benny shouts, making his way to the basement. "Good Cop! Can you hear me?"_

_There's no response._

_"Come on, Benny," Emmet says, pulling people out of the way so they can get to Good Cop. "We need to move all these guys, and we, we gotta call the others, or something."_

_Benny blinks, then nods. "Right, we do. We have to call the paramedics, Good Cop, he's, he's not doing great. He needs help, and fast."_

_They work quickly, moving the people out of the way until Good Cop's the only body--person, he's not dead yet, he's still breathing, he can't be dead yet--left at the bottom of the stairwell. Emmet goes to call the paramedics, and Benny's left with Good Cop's immobile body._

_Benny kneels next to him. "Good Cop? Good Cop, please, if you hear me, say anything. We're here, we're gonna get help."_

_There's still no response._

_"Come on, Good Cop, please, you can't, you can't die, we just got here, we're gonna help." Benny clenches his fists. "Ciaran," he says, desperately._

_And, very slightly, Benny sees Good Cop's eyelids move._

_"Ciaran!" he says again, louder. "Emmet, he's still alive!" He turns back towards Good Cop. "Come on, Ciaran, stay with me. You have to be okay, I don't know what we'd do if you died. Please, please, don't leave."_

_Good Cop's eyes open, very slightly. They're unfocused, looking straight through Benny to some unknown thing behind him. His lips twitch. "...B?" he asks, and oh god, he sounds horrible._

_"Yeah, yeah, it's me, it's Benny," Benny says. "Emmet's calling for help, we're gonna get you out of here in no time."_

_Good Cop's face shifts, and his eyes seem to focus more on Benny. "You...why...?"_

_And that makes Benny want to cry and laugh and so many other things at the same time, because how can Good Cop ask_ why? _After everything, after saving their lives and the world, after talking to them when they needed it, after all of the...the suffering he must have gone through after Bad Cop died, he..._

_He really hadn't known they were coming for him._

_"I called Lucy and the paramedics. They're coming soon," Emmet says. "Is he okay?"_

_Benny takes a deep breath. "I don't know," he says, "But he will be. We'll make sure of it."_

* * *

Good Cop wakes up.

He's not sure how that's even possible, because the last thing he remembers is falling from Octan's launch deck, and there's no way to survive a eighty-six story drop, so unless he's died and moved on to whatever's next, all... _this_ shouldn't be a thing.

He blinks blearily and looks around. He's in a hospital, but not one that he recognizes.

How did he get here? Who saved him? Why?

There's no Bad Cop in the back of his head to explain what happened, no hints anywhere in the hospital room. No flowers, no notes, no people.

That's fair. People don't visit him, haven't done for years now. He's used to it.

He finds his glasses--unbroken, miraculously--and puts them on, then carefully gets out of the hospital bed to look at himself. Whatever happened, it seems like he never actually hit the ground, because he doesn't have any broken bones or surgery scars or huge abrasions, just some bruises and cuts from his fight with the robots. The hospital staff had kindly bandaged his face and torso for that, though to be honest even that isn't too severe--he's always been good at dodging.

He finds his clothes by the door and puts them on. The last thing he wants to do right now is spend the day inside in an empty hospital room.

He leaves.

* * *

Good Cop wakes up.

He has a vague sense of déjà vu, and the distinct feeling that waking up is very much _not_ what he's supposed to be doing when the last thing he remembers is passing out with a punctured lung in some awful basement after hitting a man very hard with a wrench. Unless he's died and moved on to whatever's next, this really shouldn't be happening.

He blinks blearily, and--

"Ciaran! You're awake!"

Good Cop turns to look who'd said that, because why the _heck_ does anyone know his name?

Wyldstyle looks down at him, Benny by her side.

"You okay, Ciaran?" Wyldstyle asks.

"Good Cop," Good Cop corrects, and talking feels like trying to talk through a ball of cotton. "I don't use Ciaran anymore."

"Good Cop, then," Wyldstyle says, handing over a small cup of water. "How are you feeling?"

Someone helps him drink the water, and most of it gets into his mouth, which he counts as a success. His mouth still feels like something died in it, but at least it's easier to ignore now. "Terrible," he says, because he's sore everywhere and breathing hurts and he _shouldn't be alive._ "Who told you my name?"

"Yeah, about that..."

"Ciaran's awake?" Good Cop hears from outside the room and--

"Ma?" he asks, trying to get up to look, much to the protest of his body. "Is that Ma?"

He hears the door open and Ma rushes over to his side. "Ciaran, Ciaran, you're awake, I'm so glad you're okay," she says, and Good Cop doesn't think he's seen her this emotional since that time he almost died falling out of a tree when he was a kid.

"It's okay, Ma, I'm okay now," Good Cop says. "But you, why are you in the city?"

Ma lightly cuffs his ear. "You were attacked in the middle of calling us! Of course we came to make sure you were okay! It's a good thing we did, too. You look like you got into a fight with a bull and lost." She huffs and leans over for a hug. "You're not allowed to scare us like that ever again, son."

"I know, Ma," Good Cop says. "I'm sorry, Ma." He pulls away after a bit and looks around at so many blurry faces, so many people who were waiting here for...him.

He doesn't think he's ever had this many people care about his health. Especially not all at once.

Good Cop wets his lips and asks, "What...what happened? I remember fighting the people there and passing out, and that's about it."

He thinks he remembers B calling out his name. Maybe it was a hallucination or he was just that close to death; either way, there's no need to mention it.

"We were all looking for you," Ma says. "Benny and Emmet found you and called the paramedics, and what were you thinking, fighting five armed thugs with your injuries?"

"Well." Good Cop glances away, pushes down the instinctive, 'It was the thing to do' response, because he doesn't want to lie to Ma's face. She doesn't deserve that after all this. "Nobody came to get me before. I didn't think anyone would this time, either."

"Oh, _Ciaran."_

Ma hugs him again, and she holds onto him like she'll never let him go.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another one of those oblique mentions of suicide comes up. It's pretty much the same as the last one.

_It's getting late, and hospital visiting hours are almost over. Most people have cleared out, and Wyldstyle thinks it's better that way. She doesn't want other people around for this conversation._

_She makes her way to the trauma ward, down the hall to room 245, and knocks._

_"Come in," Good Cop says._

_Wyldstyle goes in. Good Cop is alone in his room, sitting in the bed with a book in his lap. He doesn't exactly look_ better _than when they found him, since all of his bruises have gone from blue to yellowish-purple, but he looks the most lucid he's been in the last two days._

_"Wyldstyle," Good Cop says, putting down his book. "How are you?"_

_"Fine," Wyldstyle says. She holds up a purple 'get well' card. "Got you something. Hope you get better and stuff."_

_"Ah, thank you, that's very kind," Good Cop replies. "But I doubt that you came all this way just to give me a card."_

_Wyldstyle tosses her card onto an end table and shakes her head. "I wanted to talk."_

_"Seems like everyone does," Good Cop says. "I've already seen Ma and Pa, Emmet, Princess Unikitty, Benny, some strange hippy with a staff..."_

_"That was Vitruvius. What did_ he _want to say?"_

_Good Cop tilts his head. "I'm not sure, to be honest. He said something about trees and mystical forces and flows of time, but I'd just woken up after surgery, so it's all somewhat hazy." He pauses, then sighs and sets his book aside. "I always got the impression you disliked me, so I admit I'm confused by this visit."_

_Wyldstyle takes a seat and scoots up closer to the bed. "It's not like I hate you," she says. "I mean, obviously, I don't like you, either. I just...don't_ get _you, I guess."_

_"Well, I'm always happy to talk. If you have questions, I can't promise I'll answer everything, but I'll try my best." Good Cop says._

_That honestly surprises Wyldstyle, considering that the last time they talked, she punched him in the face and they got into a huge shouting match over dinner, but if he isn't going to bring it up, she won't either._

_So she sets her hands down, tries to align her thoughts, because with everything since Taco Tuesday and that broadcast and everything else, where can she even_ start?

_"Why did you help us?" she asks. "Back when you dropped those floor plans for us, or got us out of Octan. I mean, you...you hate Master Builders, so why?"_

_Good Cop takes a deep breath. "I don't hate Master Builders, Wyldstyle. I hate many things about them, like how they think Master Building makes them better than everyone else, or that they always know best, or how they seem to think the world is theirs to do as they please. But that has everything to do with the people and nothing to do with the Master Building."_

_"But you did all those things to us!" Wyldstyle bursts out. "There are_ horror _stories about you and Bad Cop, up in Cloud Cuckooland."_

_"I'd be surprised if there weren't, after what we put you through," Good Cop says. "I know it would be easier to understand if I hated you, or were under orders, but it's not that simple." He pauses to take a drink of water, then continues, "It's true that many of the things I did were because of Business, but there are just as many things that were solely my responsibility, and I can't sincerely apologize for them because I can't honestly say I would do things differently if given the chance. If it's any consolation, we never wanted to kill or torture you and your friends. But that doesn't change the fact that we did it, and for that I am sorry."_

_"What, that's it?" Wyldstyle snaps back. "'I didn't want to, sorry'?"_

_"I mean it sincerely, but I know it's not enough," Good Cop agrees. "I don't think I'll ever do enough to make up for the scars we've left, and I don't expect you to forgive me."_

_Wyldstyle's hands curl into fists in her lap. "If you...if you didn't want to do it, then_ why did you?"

_"There's a difference between what I don't_ want _to do and what I_ won't _do. You'll find that the distance between those two lines is vast," Good Cop says with deliberation. "In the end, we were scared. I know it sounds like an excuse, and maybe it is, but Business was not an easy man to work for on a good day. That incident after you rescued Emmet and escaped was not the first time he had tried to kill one of us."_

I did something bad to Bad Cop, _Wyldstyle remembers._ He's not getting better.

_Good Cop clasps his hands in his lap and says, "I don't know what you expect to hear, but I didn't help you on Taco Tuesday because I had some radical change in heart, or had some vested interest in saving the world. Business took everything away from me, and I wanted him to suffer for it."_

_"That's..." Too simple. Too unbelievable. Too... "selfish," Wyldstyle says._

_Good Cop sighs. "I'm a selfish person, Wyldstyle. I do my best to keep it in check, but I can't help wanting things."_

_Wyldstyle looks at Good Cop. He still doesn't have new glasses, and it makes his face look thinner. Sharper. She's never been able to guess his age--the fact that he always seemed to be ten years younger than Bad Cop threw her off, but now, with thin creases around his mouth and shadows under his eyes, he looks_ old. _He looks the most tired she's ever seen him._

_"...Why aren't you smiling?" she asks. "You're always doing that."_

_"Emmet talked to me earlier," Good Cop says. "He said some things about friendship and how he thought I was, in his words, 'a cool and great guy', and how he wanted to be there for me when I needed it the way I was for him. I don't know where he gets optimism like that, but..."_

_Wyldstyle raises an eyebrow. "Okay?"_

_"He suggested that it would be better if I stopped smiling when I wasn't happy. It's a hard habit to break, and I don't really see the point, but I'm giving it a try," Good Cop says._

_"Oh," Wyldstyle says. She's a little comforted to know that Good Cop was faking at least some of his happy-go-lucky personality. It makes him seem more human, more...normal. "Why did you? Smile all the time, I mean."_

_"If you smile, people don't worry," Good Cop says simply._

_That's kind of sad, Wyldstyle thinks, because she_ gets _it, because she knows what it's like to have people on her case all the time, knows what it's like to have to fight and get loud just so people will mind their own business and let her be herself._

_A silence settles between them and Wyldstyle laces her fingers together, just to give herself something to do. She had questions before she got here, but they're all irrelevant now that she's not even sure what she wants from Good Cop._

_After all she's learned in these past few weeks, everything she's seen, he's...not what she expected._

_"Well, um," she says after a while, "I guess that's really all I wanted to ask. So I'll, uh, be on my way."_

_Good Cop nods. "Have a good evening, then, Wyldstyle."_

_Wyldstyle gets up and makes her way to the door, then pauses to face Good Cop. "Actually, one more thing: Why did you stop using your name?"_

_Good Cop huffs. "I suppose I should have expected that, coming from you. It's nothing earth-shattering, just...I'm not the person I was when I was Ciaran, is all. Perhaps you felt the same way."_

_And maybe she did. She remembers wanting to be special, feeling too plain, too meant for great and wonderful things to be chained down by such a normal name as Lucy. She remembers trying to change, trying to find what fit her, and just being so_ frustrated.

_But then there was the Piece of Resistance, and Taco Tuesday, and everything and everyone else and she's felt...better, since._

_"It's not so bad," she says. "Using my name again, at least with Emmet. I don't know how he does it, but he makes it sound right."_

_"Then you're very lucky to have him," Good Cop says. "Ciaran hasn't fit me in years."_

_"You could try," Wyldstyle says. "Using it. Just a little. Ciaran's a good name."_

_Good Cop hums. "Maybe one day. But not for a long time."_

_Wyldstyle doesn't push. Even after that...elucidating conversation, there's a lot about Good Cop that doesn't make sense, but_ this...

_This, she can understand._

* * *

Good Cop gets discharged from the hospital three days after landing in it.

The doctor gives him a strict course of antibiotics and painkillers and sternly tells him to take it easy and come back if anything at all goes wrong, then sets him on his way.

It's kind of a novelty to get properly discharged instead of just leaving against medical advice, the way Bad Cop had often done, back in the day. Between all of the people constantly going in and out of his hospital room, it's not like he could have slipped away anyways.

He goes home.

It's a relief, honestly, to be up and about and alone again, away from all of his well-wishers. He knows they just want to make sure he's okay, but there's only so much concern he can endure at a time.

His apartment is quiet; it always is. He's relieved beyond belief that nobody got the idea to break in to throw some kind of horrible welcome home party, or at least, had the presence of mind to realize just how poorly that would go.

Of course, the first thing he does is go check on his rowan tree. It's been four days, and it's surely dried out by now. Both Ma and Bad Cop would kill him if he let their favorite tree die, so he goes out to assess the damage.

He finds that it's been recently watered and that there's a note under the tray.

_Hey,_ it says.

_When I flew past a while ago, I saw that you had this tree out here. Since you've been in the hospital and stuff, I thought you might need someone to water it for you. Don't worry, Ma Cop told me how!_

_Sorry for getting up on your balcony and stuff without asking, but it looked like this tree was pretty important to you. Hope you get better soon!_

_Benny_

There's a doodle of Benny's space station logo and a smiley face, and Good Cop can't help but feel just a little warm inside.

He's alone, but not as alone as he used to be.

* * *

Good Cop stops by the reconstruction site.

Obviously, he's not allowed to do any lifting, but he can help with logistics and directing people just fine. Anyone who tries to patronize him because of his injuries gets politely told to put their concerns somewhere else.

With the Master Builders helping with construction and Business's robots helping with cleanup, reconstruction surges ahead towards completion. At this rate, Good Cop thinks they might be done in less than a month, if a bit more...creatively decorated than before.

Things are good.

* * *

_It's late, and for some reason, for the third day in a row, Benny just keeps coming back to this rooftop._

_"Benny?"_

_Benny glances back to see Good Cop with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and a thermos of hot cocoa. He hasn't seen Good Cop since the hospital a couple of weeks ago since he'd been called away to the space station pretty much immediately afterwards, and Good Cop..._

_He looks better now. The bruises are mostly gone, and it looks like Good Cop got a new pair of glasses--round ones again, but a little lighter in color. He doesn't look exactly the same as he did before everything went down, but he looks comfortable and kind and_ Good Cop.

_"Hey," Benny says. "Can't sleep?"_

_Good Cop shrugs. "The pain keeps me up. I'm not as young as I used to be."_

_"Well, none of us are," Benny says, moving over to give Good Cop room._

_"I suppose not." Good Cop sits down and pours a cup of cocoa. He sips it, and says, "I never said thank you, you know."_

_"What?"_

_"For getting me out of that hole," Good Cop says. "And being there afterwards."_

_Benny blinks. "Of-of course, I mean, you already did a lot of the work, getting out and...beating up all of those guys, there wasn't really much else to do after that except be there, and..."_

_"It means a lot more than you know," Good Cop replies. He sighs and puts down his mug. "Pa said he talked to you. About me. And knowing him, he probably said all sorts of things I didn't want him to, but he told me that you care about me._

_"I don't know why you would, because I've never done anything for you, and no, that's not a request for you to explain yourself, because I honestly don't think it matters."_

_Benny looks over at Good Cop, who's staring out into the city. "I want to be your friend," Benny says, because that's really the only coherent thought he can gather in response to that. "When you got mad at me about the thing with Bad Cop, I thought...you know, you're right, and I really don't know anything about you. But I've been thinking that I want to change that, because you're a good guy. I want to know you better."_

_Good Cop's mouth twists. "I'm not a good person," he says. "I know I act that way a lot, but there's a lot up here," he gestures to his head, "that's not good. You saw what Bad Cop and I did to your Master Builder friends, and you saw what I did to those guys who captured me. And I'm not sorry about it."_

_Benny knows. He knows that under Good Cop's smiles and friendliness, there's a core of jagged edges. The kind of edges needed to walk into a building and demolish it with a click of a detonator, to capture and torture, to fight back against kidnappers even with cracked ribs and no means but some trash._

_If Benny isn't careful, he'll end up cutting himself on edges like that._

_It honestly scares him a bit, knowing exactly what Good Cop is capable of and has done, but even despite all that, Benny believes that Good Cop is still good. He keeps trying to be better, and that's worth so much more than Good Cop realizes._

_"Doing some bad things doesn't mean you're all bad," Benny says, "And you, you do good things, too. You helped out with rebuilding, and all those people who got their lives messed up after Taco Tuesday, and you talk to us even though you don't really like us..."_

_"I almost murdered Business," Good Cop says, as calmly as if talking about the weather, and it's so out of nowhere that Benny thinks he can't have possibly heard right._

_"Wh-what?"_

_"Not that night he came to me that you're probably thinking of. It was before that ridiculous party. He came to 'check up on me' and he mentioned my parents and kept saying things about Bad Cop..." He takes a sip of his cocoa. "And I was so angry that I very seriously considered slipping potassium cyanide into his coffee. What would another dead body be? I thought. I could get rid of it, and nobody would suspect me. I'm so nice and docile, and I was one of his biggest supporters. Who'd ever think I was the murderer?"_

_Benny tries to speak, and finds that his mouth is dry. He's scared of what he's about to ask, but he has to. He swallows. "Why...why didn't you do it?"_

_"Bad Cop would have disapproved," Good Cop says. "There was probably something else, but that was the big one. Bad Cop wouldn't have wanted me to murder someone over him. Not even Business."_

_"Oh," Benny says. "But, but you_ didn't _murder Business, so it's all right, then, isn't it?"_

_There's a hint of a rueful smile at the corner of Good Cop's mouth, and he says, "It's not that simple, Benny."_

_Benny looks down, then back up to Good Cop, who doesn't look shaken in the least at all these things he's saying. "I mean, even if you think horrible things, you don't_ do _horrible things, you do good things, and that means you're not...not as bad as you think you are."_

_Good Cop flicks his gaze over to Benny, then says, "I'm the one who put that broadcast out. The one during that party in Cloud Cuckooland."_

_It takes a second for Benny to recall what Good Cop is referring to and he blinks, because the investigation into who put out the broadcast had stalled weeks ago with no leads to speak of, and he--he remembers seeing Good Cop, huddled in an alley with red, dry eyes and an expression like the world had ended and...there's no way to fake something like that. He can't think for even a second that Good Cop would do that to_ himself. _"Y-you?"_

_"I have top security clearance at Octan. All I had to do was walk into the server room, take the files, and transfer them to the broadcasting studio for a certain timeslot, then delete the evidence. Those files the police got, I sent those, too."_

_There's something about that that just doesn't compute, and Benny feels like he's pulling too hard on his thoughts to connect them together, like they'll snap at any second. "But...why?" he asks._

_"I had to." Good Cop looks out, staring at something very, very far away. "You don't know what Bad Cop used to be like, but he was...brilliant. He was like fire, and he felt things so strongly and cared about everything so much that it was all I could do to be there for him and keep him from burning himself out. And despite everything he felt, all the things that he wanted, he was always there for me._

_"Business, he beat us down, year after year. I made it through, more or less, but Bad Cop... He couldn't hurt innocents, didn't want blood and destruction on his hands, but he wanted to fight for Business's vision, and he was scared of what Business would do to us, so he kept doing the work until he broke himself on it. He hated himself for it, and there wasn't anything I could do. He never said anything, but I wonder about that bottle of poison sometimes..."_

_Good Cop takes a deep breath, then faces Benny. He's not smiling, not even a little. "Bad Cop was as good as dead long before Business ripped him out of me. Business didn't even know he'd killed Bad Cop until I told him, that night before you found him. He was so...clueless, and he never even thought about consequences, and I couldn't let him go with a slap on the wrist. Not after Bad Cop."_

_Benny tries to swallow, but his mouth is dry and his mind is racing. He doesn't want this to be real, he wants it to all be some horrible lie, but this is the person he wants to know. This is Good Cop. "Why...why are you telling me this?"_

_"Because if you want to be the kind of person who trusts me, you should know," Good Cop says. "I might act nice, but that doesn't make me good, no matter what you think." He sniffs and takes another sip of his cocoa. "If you want to report me, go ahead. I won't stop you. If you dig deep enough, you'll probably find the evidence to get me convicted. I'd run, of course, but then everyone would know, at least."_

_The information sits heavy on Benny, and he doesn't know what to do with it. He's not sure if he'll ever know._

_"I...even with all that, I still want to try," Benny says. "Being friends, and all."_

_Good Cop looks at him. He smiles, nothing like his usual smiles, but something very small and subtle and soft, and Benny thinks he might be seeing something very private all of a sudden. "Well buddy," Good Cop says, "I guess we'll see what happens."_

* * *

Good Cop sweeps up the last of the fallen leaves from around his little rowan tree and sits down in front of it.

"Hey, B," he says. "I haven't talked to you for a while. How are you doing?"

There's no answer except for a cold wind that flutters over the balcony. Good Cop pulls his jacket in tighter. Fall has just about ended, and it shows.

"Me, I'm doing pretty well," Good Cop says. "I'm sleeping better these days, though I still have nightmares sometimes. My ribs still hurt a little, too, and the doctor says that'll be for another week, but at least it's manageable.

"Reconstruction is over. Completely done. They threw a big block party and everything. I didn't go, of course, but I hear it was exciting." Good Cop looks up into grey clouds and overcast skies, and says, "I'm not sure what I'll do now. I might go talk to the Bricksburg PD, see if they need more feet on the ground. I wonder if anyone there still remembers me."

Good Cop huffs. "Probably. You, at least, were very memorable."

He sits in silence for a little, then says, "The other day, Business came to talk to me. He wanted to apologize for everything he did to us. To you, really." He pauses for a second to think, then continues, "He meant it this time, or at least as much as he could. I told him that I appreciated it and that I accepted his apology, but that...that I still couldn't forgive him.

"It's not like I'm angry at him. It's taken a long time, but I really think I'm not angry anymore. It's just, even after everything...I can't forgive him for killing you. I don't know if I'll ever be able to find that in myself, and if I do, it won't be for a long time."

Good Cop clasps his hands together in his lap. "There are people who...care about me now. Not just Ma and Pa, but people like Benny and Emmet and even Wyldstyle on better days. I can't possibly tell you what they see in me, but they haven't left, which is...new.

"They're all pretty high-energy people, and they can get overbearing, and maybe they're a little frustrating to be around sometimes, but they're good people. I think you'd like them, if you gave them a chance."

Good Cop looks down. Threads his fingers together. "They keep telling me that I'm better than the horrible things I think and know I can do, a lot like you did, when we were younger. They tell me I'm a good person, but..." He sighs. "You were always the better half, B. You're stronger, you're braver, you're more honest, you're more _human_ than I ever was. And I keep wishing that they could have met you. Not the you that hunted them or the you that got broken down by Business all those years, but _you,_ back when things were...better."

Good Cop takes a deep breath. "They want to be _friends_ with me, but I...I don't know if I can trust them. It's been such a long time that I'm not sure I know how." He squeezes his hands together gently. "I know I'll never be able to trust them the way I trusted you, and there will never be anyone who can be what you were to me, but I think that's...okay. I think I'm willing to try."

He swallows thickly. "I miss you, B. I miss you so much, all the time, and I don't know if it'll ever stop. I...I don't know what I'm doing, without you, but I'm trying my hardest, I really am.

Good Cop pulls his glasses off to wipe his eyes and says, "I love you, B. You did some stupid, stupid things that I'll never understand, but you were always there for me, even though I wasn't always there for you. You made me better, and I wanted to be better because of you, because you always believed I could be _good,_ and I just wish that I could have helped you.

"You're gone now, and it's...it's hard. But it's better than before, because I'm not alone now. I have people who are there, and want to help me even though I'm just me. 

"I'll live because you can't. See the world like we always wanted to. Meet interesting people, learn new things. And maybe, one day, I'll be the good person you always thought I was."

He picks up Bad Cop's glasses and the frames are cool against his fingers. He rotates them in his hands, watching how sunlight flashes off of the silvered lenses.

He smiles.

"I...I think things will be okay."

**Author's Note:**

> We did it! We reached the end. Thank you for reading!
> 
> If you enjoyed the story, consider leaving a comment. It helps motivate me, much more than you know.
> 
> I have a [tumblr](http://jessepinwheel.tumblr.com/) if you're interested in that sort of thing, and I'm always open to talking about my stories or writing in general. I post all of my fic updates on it and occasional art, and I'm open to asks if those are things that interest you.
> 
> Speaking of art, [I drew a few scenes from the story.](https://jessepinwheel.tumblr.com/post/162742177399/since-im-halfway-through-posting-my-lego-movie) If you enjoyed this story, you might like it.
> 
> If you want more adventures of Good Cop, perhaps you will enjoy the spin-off/sequel, [Runner,](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13386726/chapters/30663384) in which Good Cop gets punched back in time.


End file.
